Our Vision

The Discovery Research Platform for Hidden Cell Biology (DRP-HCB) is a cross disciplinary team of researchers and technologists working to develop new techniques to overcome technical and knowledge barriers to scientific progress.

Enabled by five Technology Cores the DRP-HCB works with an interdisciplinary community of scientists.

Our platform focuses on the intractable and unexplored areas of Cell biology, which we term the Hidden Cell. Technical and cultural limitations have resulted in knowledge barriers preventing our full understanding of the complexity and scale of sub-cellular processes. To overcome these barriers the DRP-HCB  brings together cross-disciplinary scientists who will together compile a critical mass of molecular characterisation and insights to make these understudied areas accessible to the research and medical communities.

The DRP-HCB aims to:

  • DRP-Overview figure
    Re-focus the cell biology research landscape towards major unsolved challenges
  • Provide scientific insights that drive new hypotheses in previously unforeseen areas
  • Create a paradigm for broad data and insight distribution to ignite and advance scientific enquiry

Realising our Vision

The DRP-HCB is focused on three broad areas of hidden cell biology

  • Proteome Characterisation – unchartered proteomes
  • Atom to Cell – disconnect between atomic structures and cellular scales
  • Rare Events – undetected rare and stochastic events

To overcome these barriers DRP-HCB has established five Technology Cores:

  1. Proteomics Core
  2. Structural Biology Core (formerly Cryo-EM and crystallisation facility)
  3. Light Microscopy Core (formerly COIL)
  4. Bioinformatics Core
  5. Data Integration Core (from December 2024).

DRP-HCB is also affiliated with facilities that are operating independently including the Edinburgh Genome Foundry (EGF), Edinburgh protein production facility (EPPF) and the Single Cell Sequencing Facility.

Delivering our vision

  • We will disrupt cultural barriers to interdisciplinary working,
  • Overcome technical barriers, and
  • Establish new research infrastructure models fit for future discovery science

Funding

The Discovery Research Platform For Hidden Cell Biology is funded by Wellcome.

Discovery Research Platforms

About Wellcome

Wellcome supports science to solve the urgent health challenges facing everyone. We support discovery research into life, health and wellbeing, and we’re taking on three worldwide health challenges: mental health, infectious disease and climate and health.

 

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