Dresden International Graduate School for Interdisciplinary Life Sciences

Structural changes in biopolymers are the basis of the regulation of their biological function. Exposure of specific sites for molecular recognition as well as switching processes between states of different activity of a biomolecule can thus be accomplished. Understanding the underlying mechanisms allows identifying putative sites for pharmacological intervention and opens the prospect of engineering artificial molecular switches. We are interested in the mechanisms and dynamics of such structural transitions which we study in real time, using vibrational spectroscopy, circular dichroism and fluorescence spectroscopy. Our lab has thus made major contributions to the mechanistic characterization of G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). We are currently exploring the role of water as a dynamic structural component by expressing membrane proteins with engineered fluorescence labels that report intra-membrane protein water. In combination with calorimetric studies we aim at the integration of structural and thermodynamic data. In the same manner, we have identified fundamental principles that determine stability and dynamics of synthetic DNA superstructures, so-called DNA origami.  The ensemble of our studies provides, reaction models that describe both structural and energetic aspects of conformational changes in natural and synthetic biopolymers.