Wim VRANKEN

Proteins perform a wide variety of functions in cells through interactions with each other and many additional molecules. These interactions are traditionally understood from a static description (a picture); however proteins are not static, on the contrary they change between multiple states (a movie). They move dynamically between these states (conformations) - our research is aimed elucidating the relation between dynamics, conformation and experimental (mostly NMR) data on proteins. By unravelling the underlying physical and chemical principles with statistics and informatics, and relating them to biological events, we try to better understand how proteins work, and generate new approaches that predict how they work - placing the research in the interdisciplinary structural bioinformatics or structural computational biology category.

See the Bio2Byte website for more information, and ResearchGate, Google Scholar, or the VUB research portal for an overview of my work and publications.

Please see the research pages of the Bio2Byte website for more information.

I teach the following university courses:

- Algorithms in computational biology and bioinformatics (VUB//ULB, titular)

- Structural biology, NMR partims (VUB, co-titular)

- General chemistry, 1st bachelor Biology/Geografy (VUB, co-titular)

- Structural bioinformatics, NMR partim (ULB, co-titular)

In addition, I give individual guest lectures (e.g. 'NMR in protein structure determination' at the ULB), and have been teaching the 'Introduction to Python' 2-day course for the VIB since 2011.