A new center for research on structural biology has been established at UC Davis through a major award from the W.M. Keck Foundation in Los Angeles. The $850,000 gift will help equip laboratory suites for X-ray crystallography -- a method that produces high-resolution images of protein structure -- and establish a new protein expression laboratory. The facilities, which also include faculty laboratory space, collectively will be named the W.M. Keck Center for Structural Biology. "Structural biology is a critical and exciting field because it helps scientists understand all biological processes more fully," says Mark McNamee, dean of the biological sciences division. "For example, the field is shedding light on apoptosis (programmed cell death), DNA recombination and repair, and the function of proteins involved in the cell cycle." During the past two years, the campus has strengthened its faculty in the field, recruiting three scientists with expertise in X-ray crystallography.