Research Overview
Computational molecular evolution
Evolution has invented a colourful zoo of biomolecules including the realms of nucleic acids, polypeptides, lipids, and sugars and zillions of small molecules. Nucleic acids and polypeptides are particularly remarkable because they are linear sequences of a limited set of building blocks of nucleotides or amino acids, respectively. In the course of natural evolution these sequences are changed easily to carry new functions. We are using the same paradigm to find new functional molecules, especially peptides, computationally. To this end we are developing methods for multi-objective optimization of molecules and for many aspects of automated molecular modelling. We are also applying these methods and other methods from bioinformatics in collaboration with biologists, chemists, and medical scientists to engineer new functional molecules.