University of Houston Center for Molecular Biophysics
::Lab Overview
Our aim is to use a biophysical approach to probe mechanisms of chemical and structural activation in biological systems and their role in human diseases. A strength of the Legge laboratory is the availability of wet lab, computer processing resources, and NMR instrument time to facilitate a multidisciplinary team environment for research personnel in the lab.
The Legge laboratory has wet-laboratory space, as well as a separate computer room, and instrument room on the fourth floor of the Houston Science Center (HSC) building. The laboratory is equipped to perform biophysical studies, molecular biology and wet chemistry. The lab hosts a Bicore 2000 and a Olis 1000 Rapid Scanning Monochromator (RSM) configurable for absorbance, fluorescence, or circular dichroism spectroscopy.
Our research program makes use of the UH Keck/IMD NMR Center which has the first 800 MHz NMR spectrometer installed within Texas and an advanced upgraded Bruker 600 MHz spectrometer. The latest facility enhancement, in January 2006, is the installation of a Bruker 5mm TXI CryoProbe for the 800 MHz instrument. This NMR probehead is cooled by cyrogenic helium gas to reduce thermal noise and improve the signal to noise ratio by as much as three times a conventional probe.
