The Trieste branch of the Institute of Crystallography (IC-TS) was originally established in 1992 as a detached section of the ‘G. Giacomello’ Institute of Chemical Structuristics of Montelibretti (Rome). Since its inception, IC-TS has been hosted within the Area Science Park, and in 2014 it moved to the Basovizza (TS) facilities, which house its offices and laboratories.
IC-TS maintains a permanent staff of five researchers and two administrative/technical units, in addition to post-docs, PhD students, and Master’s students involved in research activities.
Although IC-TS was founded primarily to support synchrotron light activities, its disciplinary scope has evolved over time, while maintaining a core focus on the study of structure-activity-function relationships in biological and inorganic systems. Currently, the main research lines include:
Structure-activity relationship studies of organic and inorganic materials at varying levels of complexity, utilizing synchrotron X-ray diffraction.
Structural Biology for fundamental research and drug discovery. This specifically involves studying the structure-function relationship of biological macromolecules through both structural (X-ray crystallography, SAXS) and biophysical approaches (Grating Coupled Interferometry, ITC, DSF, DLS, Fluorescence). Furthermore, advanced molecular biology and biochemistry techniques are employed for the expression and purification of the macromolecules under study.
Design, modification, and synthesis of functionalized peptides to support structure-activity relationship studies. Specifically, part of the research and synthesis activity focuses on novel antimicrobial peptides, both proline-rich and otherwise.
IC-TS houses laboratories dedicated to protein expression and purification, as well as biophysical measurements of intermolecular interactions, kinetics, and ligand-receptor affinity. There is also a dedicated area for the crystallization of biological macromolecules for crystallographic studies.
IC-TS co-manages (at 50%) the scientific activities of the XRD1 beamline at the Elettra Synchrotron in Basovizza and actively collaborates with many prominent scientific institutions in Trieste: Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste, Area Science Park, CNR-IOM, the University of Trieste (Departments of Life Sciences and of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences), and the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB).
