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Biophysicist Sebastian Deindl: Return to Tübingen with Nobel Prize ambitions!
Sebastian Deindl returns to Tübingen to revolutionize structural biology as a Humboldt Professor and gain dynamic insights.
Biophysicist Sebastian Deindl: Return to Tübingen with Nobel Prize ambitions!
Sebastian Deindl, an outstanding biophysicist, returns to Germany to take up the Alexander von Humboldt Professorship at the University of Tübingen. This award, known as the most valuable international research prize in Germany, is awarded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation funded with five million euros over five years. Deindl will take up the chair of structural biology at the Interfaculty Institute of Biochemistry (IFIB) at the University of Tübingen.
Deindl's research focuses on the molecular structure of large biological substances, especially proteins and protein complexes. He is particularly interested in how the structure of these protein complexes changes during their function. He pursues an integrated structural biology approach to better understand the dynamics of biological macromolecules. This is particularly relevant for medical research, especially for enzymes that interact with nucleic acids and, when malfunctioning, often cause serious diseases such as cancer.
Innovative research methods
To achieve his goals, Deindl uses a combination of single-molecule fluorescence imaging, structural biology techniques, biochemistry and computer simulations. These procedures are necessary because molecular machines, which consist of proteins or protein complexes and are only a few nanometers in size, are dynamic and constantly in motion. This makes classical observation methods inadequate to explain how they work. His group continually investigates how the structure of protein complexes changes as they perform their functions in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of how they work.
An important goal of Deindl is to create films of molecular machines that combine real-time dynamic information from single-molecule experiments with biochemical and structural data. This could help to gain a visual understanding of the working processes in the cells, which is important for the development of new therapeutic approaches.
The path to a professorship
Deindl studied at the University of Tübingen, where he also took his first academic steps. In 2009, he received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard University in the USA. In 2014 he took up a professorship in molecular biophysics at Uppsala University in Sweden and received the title of professor in 2022.
Throughout his career, Deindl has been awarded several prestigious awards, including the EMBO Young Investigator Award (2019), as well as the ERC Starting Grant (2017) and the ERC Advanced Grant (2022). The official award ceremony for the Humboldt Professorship is planned for May 2026, which the scientific community is looking forward to.
The University of Tübingen hopes that Deindl's expertise will raise the field of structural biology to a top international level by integrating dynamic studies. This step could take research to new heights and significantly advance the understanding of biological processes.