TUMCS | Thomas Höfer | 18.05.2022
Dr. Vincent Friebe
Image: Jan Winter / TUM
Herbicides are indispensable for modern agriculture and have drastically increased food production. However, their extensive use in recent decades has also incurred a burden on our environment. The runoff of these chemical compounds into our water ways leads to decreases in biodiversity that hampers the resilience of the ecosystems surrounding arable land. Therefore, the detection and tracking of these compounds is of great interest to our society. Vincent will use computer-aided rational design to construct tailored enzymes for more sensitive and selective detection of these and similar compounds within a biosensor.
Using cutting-edge docking simulations and molecular dynamics simulations, he will simulate and predict protein structure and function, which he will seek to valorize with experimental characterizations.
These efforts will be used to optimize a design-build-test-learn loop that enables the creation of tailored biosensing recognition elements specific to compounds of environmental consequence.