Fellow

Helen Saibil is Bernal Professor of Structural Biology at Birkbeck College. Her research is directed towards understanding the operation of macromolecular machines, focussing particularly on molecular chaperones, protein misfolding, and membrane complexes. In the field of ordered protein misfolding, her group has produced the first 3D structures of amyloid fibrils. Their discovery of globular subunits in fibrils formed by mammalian prion protein and ß2-microglobulin challenge the prevailing view of continuous beta sheet structures in amyloid. Another recent advance has been the structure determination of the yeast protein remodeling factor involved in disaggregation of protein aggregates and prion fibrils.