Gustav Oberdorfer (GO) is a biochemist and structural biologist whose major research interests are designing and engineering biomolecular structures and their functions - a strongly collaborative effort that combines computational biology, structural biology, biochemistry and biophysics approaches and ultimately holds the promise to create superior biological materials with tailor-made properties, new pharmaceuticals, or complex fine chemicals. Currently the group of GO is focusing on designing and characterizing protein structures for small molecule binding and catalysis as well as on designing and characterizing novel monomeric alpha-helical protein folds. Moreover, his group is investigating the efficient and specific homo-oligomerization of de novo proteins with central cavities or pores for passive transport. Since he joined the faculty in Graz, his group has established itself as a major contributor TO THE integrative structural biology community WITH the establishment of enzyme and protein design as well as de novo structure prediction techniques and high-throughput protein expression and characterization methods.
