Welcome to the Özkan Lab

Our Laboratory is striving to understand the development and functioning of the nervous system through structural biology and biochemistry. We are interested in protein-protein interactions and their molecular underpinnings that govern how neurons function and are regulated by their environment.

• We are a structural biology lab. We use x-ray crystallography, electron microscopy, and various light scattering methods and biophysical techniques as major tools to investigate protein complexes of the nervous system.
• We are discovery biologists. We combine structural and biophysical methods with protein interaction discovery methods to gain a network- and system-level understanding of the cell surface.
• We are interested in cellular signaling and how cell surface protein complexes initiate developmental programs, especially at the synapse and the axon growth cone.

We are at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Chicago, and part of a community of scientists interested in a molecular and mechanistic understanding of life. We are also active members of the UChicago Neuroscience community, as part of the Grossman Institute for Neuroscience, Quantitative Biology and Human Behavior.