MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology

The Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, usually called the LMB, is a research institute in Cambridge, England, that took a central part in the revolution in molecular biology of the 1950s and 1960s. Its roots lie in a small Medical Research Council unit formed in 1947 around Max Perutz and John Kendrew, which worked on the structure of proteins at the Cavendish Laboratory. The unit moved into a purpose-built laboratory on the outskirts of Cambridge in 1962, the year Kendrew and Perutz shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry and Francis Crick and James Watson received a share of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Fred Sanger and Aaron Klug later worked there as well. A replacement building on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus was opened in 2013, and the laboratory continues to study biological processes at atomic, molecular and cellular levels with a view to human health.