Research Themes
BSRC biophysicists study the fundamental molecular structures and interactions that underpin life.
BSRC infection biologists’ study basic and applied aspects of viral, bacterial and parasite pathogens. Their research includes fundamental studies of pathogen replication and host interactions, antimicrobial resistance, therapeutic drug design and testing, and clinical and real-time diagnostics.
BSRC researchers working in molecular medicine use interdisciplinary methods to study the fundamental molecular and mechanistic processes that underpin health, disease and ageing. Their research includes studies of heart disease, Alzheimer’s, age related macular degeneration and handedness.
The Sea Mammal Research Unit is one of the foremost institutions carrying out research on marine mammals in the World. With over 60 staff and students, SMRU represents a formidable concentration of expertise and talent in the field of marine mammalogy and, more generally, in marine ecology and the development of telemetry tags.
Understanding, shaping and sustainably exploiting the resources of the marine environment. This involves understanding how organisms function and interact with other organisms and with their environment.
Understanding the molecular processes that underpin development, physiology and evolution. Research in the SOI includes work on teleost fish and how internal and external factors influence muscle growth and physiology, with direct applications to economically important farmed and wild-caught species.
The Centre for Biological Diversity addresses the consequences of biodiversity at the interface between ecology and evolution. The ecological consequences of biodiversity are considered in terms of processes such as pollination biology, niche construction, and invasion biology.
The Centre for Biological Diversity has world-leading research programmes in the study of population diversification and speciation, which is the ultimate origin of biodiversity at the level of the species and above.
The processes and systems pertaining to the form, structure and change of the planet and its oceans. From the basalts outpouring at the mid ocean ridges to the dynamic interactions of climate at the land-ocean interface, Ocean and Earth Sciences embody a holistic view of the Earth System.
Chemists working at the interface with biology or medicine in the BSRC study, synthesise and modify the small molecules that influence protein function.
BSRC researchers apply interdisciplinary approaches to understand the fundamentals of evolution, development, chromosome replication, the cell cycle and senescence.
St Andrews is a world-leader in the development and deployment of statistical techniques for estimating and measuring biodiversity, across populations and communities of a staggering array of organisms. We measure and seek to understand genetic diversity across different levels of populations, communities, and ecosystems.
