Kresten Lindorff-Larsen: Inaugural lecture and reception

Kresten Lindorff-Larsen is new professor in Computational Protein Biophysics Proteins and gives an inaugural lecture with the title "From folding to function and degradation to disease".

Photo: Thomas Petri

Proteins are versatile macromolecules that carry out a wide range of central biological functions in all living organisms. They are widely used both as drugs and in biotechnological applications, and dysfunctional or misfolded proteins are linked to a large number of diseases. In short, proteins are cool, important and fun to work with.

The aim of our research is to understand the basic biophysical principles that govern the behaviour of proteins, and to use this to explain how proteins function and why they sometimes fail to work and thus cause disease. To reach these goals we combine computational models and simulations of proteins with biochemical and biophysical experiments that probe the structure, dynamics of interactions of proteins.

In my presentation I will provide a glimpse into the atomic world of proteins, and show examples of how we can link this view to their many diverse functions in biology.