The Rosalind Franklin Institute (the Franklin) is a national research centre, funded by the UK Research and Innovation, which is dedicated to bringing about transformative changes in life science through interdisciplinary research and technology. The Biological Mass Spectrometry theme focuses on the development of new instrumentation for mass spectrometric imaging (MSI), enabling the visualisation of molecular distributions at subcellular level and the de-novo structure elucidation of chemical species.

The ultimate goal of the theme is to understand the mechanisms behind molecular interaction networks in health and disease, and define novel diagnostic and therapeutic targets for next generation healthcare. We aim to enhance mass spectrometry as an increasingly vital tool for analytical chemistry, structural biology, and clinical medicine by creating the only instruments capable of generating structures ‘from atoms to animals’.