prof. dr. Gerrit Vriend

About Gerrit Vriend

His research interests include the use of macromolecular structure data, with emphasis on protein structures, for answering biomedical questions arising in wet-labs. Important aspects of this research aim at achieving a more in depth understanding of the structure - function relation of proteins (e.g. G protein-coupled receptors and nuclear hormone receptors) and include; (a) analysis and validation of experimental structures; (b) Homology modelling and prediction of mutational effects; (c) Handling of heterogeneous data, with emphasis on mapping data on protein structures (or models); (d) and design of related software for the above. The aim is to improve our capabilities to derive homology models for proteins for which X-ray or NMR has not delivered a solution and to extend the amount of data that can be used in an automatic fashion in the process of answering protein structure - function related questions. This includes developments of software for protein structure analysis and the implementation of novel algorithms for the analysis and prediction of protein structures.

Gert Vriend is senior professor Bioinformatics of Macromolecular Structures, and acts as the director of the CMBI bioinformatics institute.