Team | ArtMotor - Artificial Motor Protein Research

Team Members

The complementary expertise of each of our teams is critically required for the success of this project, and that the teams will work in a highly synergistic manner

Heiner Linke, Birte Höcker, and Paul Curmi

All researchers in ArtMotor during a retreat in September 2023. In-person meetings including a lab visit to one of the involved research groups are held once per year.

Heiner Linke’s group contributes with expertise in the physics of Brownian and molecular motors; modelling of our designs; and single-molecule characterization. Linke has worked with molecular motors for the past twelve years. This includes extensive modelling of both, biological and artificial molecular motors. He has been coordinating two EU FET projects on the use of biological motors (actomyosin) in nanostructures for biocomputation, and has developed novel methods for the control of molecular motors, as well as for the tracking and detection of single molecules. For modelling and theory, the group collaborates with Ralf Eichhorn (NORDITA), an expert in theory of transport processes in non-equilibrium systems, where thermal noise typically plays a dominant role.

Back from left: Patrik Nilsson, Heiner Linke, Ralf Eichhorn.

Front from left: Nils Gustafsson, Mikkel Andersen, Michael Konopik.

Heiner Linke´s research profile at Lund University

Birte Höcker's group contributes: experience in experimental and computational protein design as well as synthetic biology. This includes protein de novo design as well as engineering of protein structures, small-molecule receptors and enzymes. She has worked in this area for over 15 years. Her group has carried out innovative work in computational protein design, making important contributions to program development as well as standards in design verifications. This has led to invitations to write commentaries on protein design in prestigious journals such as Nature and Nature Chemical Biology.

Group members involved in ArtMotor: Birte Höcker, Olivier Laprévote, (back), Anna Zink, Boje Ingwersen (front).

Birte Höcker lab - Protein Design

Paul Curmi's group contributes: expertise in structural and molecular biology; the assembly of protein modules into functional synthetic units; and a deep understanding of protein machines, motors and radical structural changes in proteins. Curmi trained in the actin-myosin motor protein system during his PhD and, subsequently in his postdoc at UCSF. He set up his own group at UNSW in 1990, focusing on protein crystallography and molecular biophysics, targeting molecular machines. His group has discovered several proteins called metamorphic proteins that undergo radical structural changes. These include the protein CLIC1, which has two radically different soluble conformations as well as the ability to form an integral membrane protein.

Group members involved in ArtMotor (from left to right): Neil Robertson, Paul Curmi, Chu Liew.

Paul Curmi's UNSW Staff Page