How biological systems respond to force.
Proteins are exposed to and tightly regulated by external perturbations, binding partners and mechanical stress, altering their assembly and reactivity. Revealing the molecular driving forces and evolutionary constraints in biomolecular systems is a requirement of designing biological materials and processes, for applications in material science and biomedicine, which is the aim of our research. Our research focuses on protein materials and fibers such as silk, disordered proteins and protein folding, the extra-cellular matrix, enzymes and allosteric proteins. Evolutionary design is a complementary aspect we consider for understanding physiological functions of these systems.
The Molecular Biomechanics group, headed by Dr. Frauke Gräter, has moved to HITS in 2009. We continue being affiliated with the MPG-CAS Partner Institute for Computational Biology, Shanghai, in the frame of the Klaus Tschira Lab, where part of our projects are carried out. We make use and further develop various computational and theoretical techniques, among others molecular modelling, high-performance molecular simulations, finite element analysis and bioinformatics approaches. For virtually all of the projects, we extensively collaborate with experimental research labs.Check our Projects or Publications to learn more.
You find our newly developed extension to Gromacs for Force Distribution Analysis here.
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