The Inaugural Lecture of Professor Steve Smerdon

You are invited to attend the inaugural lecture of Professor Steve Smerdon, from the Institute of Cancer and Genomic Sciences, entitled: 'Structural biology – locks, keys, switches and other tales'.

The questions asked by biologists often have a childlike simplicity – How do livings cells divide? What happens to cells in disease? The answers, however, are incredibly complex and require an understanding of the regulated interactions of myriad different molecules. Over the past 50 years or so, our appreciation of how these cellular processes occur has increased vastly as a result of developments in the experimental methods available to study them. Among these, some of the most profound improvements have been in the area of structural biology that seeks to reveal biological mechanisms at the level of individual atoms.

In my lecture I will use my experiences over the last 35 years to illustrate how our understanding of biology has co-evolved with our ability to look at cell function at the molecular level. Using examples ranging from oxygen storage in our muscles to drug resistance in AIDS and molecular switches in the response to DNA damage and cancer I will describe the journey from humble beginnings to the current state-of-the-art and some thoughts about what the future might hold!