CBMN Seminar - Pr. Birgit Strodel (Institute of Biological Information Processing & Düsseldorf University, Germany)

Le 12 novembre prochain, Birgit Strodel donnera une conférence intitulée :

From Molecular Simulations to AI-Powered Prediction: Mechanistic Insights and Innovations in Biophysical Chemistry

Abstract

Research in my group focuses on molecular modeling, design, and simulations to address key challenges in biochemistry and biophysics. Our main research areas include peptide aggregation, therapeutic peptide design, the dynamics and membrane-binding of large GTPases, and enzyme development. Before diving into our enzyme design project, I will provide a brief overview of each of these topics. Regarding enzyme design, we have integrated classical and QM/MM molecular dynamics simulations to elucidate the mechanism of PETases, guiding mutation strategies aimed at enhancing PET degradation by promoting favorable adsorption to the PET surface and facilitating PET chain entry into the active site. Recently, we expanded our toolkit with the development of TransMEP, an AI-powered mutation prediction method that combines pre-trained language models with Gaussian process regression. After demonstrating promising results with existing data, we are now applying TransMEP to a novel problem involving the nylonase NylC, utilizing mutation data from our collaborators to further validate and refine this approach.

Biographie

Birgit Strodel studied Chemistry at Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf (Germany) and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) from 1995 to 2000. She earned her PhD in Theoretical Chemistry from 2001 to 2005 at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University Frankfurt (Germany). After completing a postdoctoral period in Biophysical Chemistry at the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2008, she has been leading the Computational Biochemistry Group at the Institute of Biological Information Processing – Structural Biochemistry of the Forschungszentrum Jülich since 2009. In June 2025, she was appointed acting Head of this institute. Since 2011, she has been a Professor of Computational Biochemistry at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. From 2019 to 2024, she served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Biophysical Chemistry, is a member of various editorial boards, and participates in the current Strategy Committee for High-Performance Computing in Germany to promote HPC development in Germany. To date, she has published more than 120 papers and collaborated with researchers across Europe, the US, and Nigeria.

Contact

• Dr. Lucie Khemtemourian, Laboratoire de Chimie et Biologie des Membranes (CBMN), lucie.khemtemourian@u-bordeaux.fr