Welcome to npj Structural Biology

T he German word ‘begreifen’ has two meanings: to touch an object and to understand how the object functions. The closest translation in the English language is likely the phrase ‘seeing is believing’. This is exactly the power of structural biology, as once we see a protein, RNA or a multicomponent complex, we can readily generate hypotheses about how it works, ultimately deriving the inner workings of its biological function(s). These insights advance our understanding of how essential cellular components, such as G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) 1 , 2 or the ribosome 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , work, but moreover, they can then be leveraged to, for example, perform structure-based drug design 7 , 8 , a collective effort that has led to the development of many lifesaving drugs during the last 25 years. The insights from structural biology have enabled a broad community, from mathematicians to physicists to chemists to biologists, to define the complex biological mechanisms that form the basis of how nature functions.