Hartmut Oschkinat (born 28 February 1957) is a German structural biologist and professor for chemistry at the

Free University of Berlin The Free University of Berlin (, often abbreviated as FU Berlin or simply FU) is a public research university in Berlin, Germany. It is consistently ranked among Germany's best universities, with particular strengths in political science and t ...

. His research focuses on the study of biological systems with solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance. He is a member of the Editorial Boards of the ''

Journal of Biomolecular NMR The ''Journal of Biomolecular NMR'' publishes research on technical developments and innovative applications of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy for the study of structure and dynamic properties of biopolymers in solution, liquid crystals, ...

'' and ''

Structure A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...

''.

Life and career

Oschkinat studied

chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

at the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University of Frankfurt. He received his doctoral degree in 1986 under the supervision of Horst Kessler with the title "Analysis of the conformation of Cyclosporin in solution using NMR-spectroscopy: development and use of new methods." in the field of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). After his work as a postdoctoral researcher with

Geoffrey Bodenhausen Geoffrey Bodenhausen (born 1951) is a French chemist specializing in nuclear magnetic resonance, being highly cited in his field. He is a Corresponding member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Phys ...

at the

University of Lausanne The University of Lausanne (UNIL; french: links=no, Université de Lausanne) in Lausanne, Switzerland was founded in 1537 as a school of Protestant theology, before being made a university in 1890. The university is the second oldest in Switzer ...

, Oschkinat moved to the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried in 1987 as a post-doc in the Lab of

Marius Clore G. Marius Clore MAE, FRSC, FRS is a British-born, Anglo-American molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. He was born in London, U.K. and is a dual US/U.K. Citizen. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the R ...

and Angela Gronenborn. There, he was working with

, Angela Gronenborn and the

Nobel Nobel often refers to: *Nobel Prize, awarded annually since 1901, from the bequest of Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel Nobel may also refer to: Companies *AkzoNobel, the result of the merger between Akzo and Nobel Industries in 1994 *Branobel, or ...

laureate

Robert Huber Robert Huber (; born 20 February 1937) is a German biochemist and Nobel laureate. known for his work crystallizing an intramembrane protein important in photosynthesis and subsequently applying X-ray crystallography to elucidate the protein's st ...

. After his habilitation at the

Technical University of Munich The Technical University of Munich (TUM or TU Munich; german: Technische Universität München) is a public research university in Munich, Germany. It specializes in engineering, technology, medicine, and applied and natural sciences. Establis ...

in 1992, Hartmut Oschkinat moved to the

European Molecular Biology Laboratory The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 27 member states, two prospect states, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and ...

in Heidelberg. Since 1998, he is the head of the department NMR-supported Structural Biology at the Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie in Berlin.

Research

At the beginning of his career, Oschkinat worked in the field of solution-state NMR, and made fundamental contributions to establish the role of multidimensional NMR spectroscopy in structural biology. After using solution-state NMR spectroscopy to determine three-dimensional structures of soluble proteins such as the pleckstrin homology domain and the

WW domain The WW domain, (also known as the rsp5-domain or WWP repeating motif) is a modular protein domain that mediates specific interactions with protein ligands. This domain is found in a number of unrelated signaling and structural proteins and may be ...

, characterise protein–protein interactions involving the latter, with applications in

fragment-based drug discovery Fragment-based lead discovery (FBLD) also known as fragment-based drug discovery (FBDD) is a method used for finding lead compounds as part of the drug discovery process. Fragments are small organic molecules which are small in size and low in mole ...

, he moved on to focus on the investigation of biological systems by solid-state NMR (ssNMR) with magic angle spinning. His group was the first to solve a protein structure using ssNMR; the structure solved was that of a microcrystalline preparation of a SH3 domain. Since 2005, his research group investigates complex biomolecular systems such as

membrane proteins Membrane proteins are common proteins that are part of, or interact with, biological membranes. Membrane proteins fall into several broad categories depending on their location. Integral membrane proteins are a permanent part of a cell membrane ...

within the native lipid environment, amyloid fibrils, and oligomers. Moreover, he develops methods to address challenging questions in structural biology where ssNMR can be applied with particular advantages, and have made particular contributions to the development of dynamic nuclear polarisation and proton detection using fast magic angle spinning.

Notable Achievements

* 1998: elected to membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization. * 2009–2011: Acting Director of the Leibniz-Institut für Molekulare Pharmakologie. * 2012: International Scientific Review Board for the

Central European Institute of Technology CEITEC (the Central European Institute of Technology) is a Research Center for Life Sciences, Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology. CEITEC was founded by a group of Brno universities (Masaryk University, Brno University of Technology, Mendel Univ ...

in Brno, Czech Republic. * 2013: elected to honorary membership of the National Magnetic Resonance Society of India. * 2014: one of six awardees of the Günther Laukien Prize, awarded annually at the Experimental Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Conference in the USA.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Oschkinat, Hartmut 20th-century German chemists 20th-century German biologists German biophysicists Goethe University Frankfurt alumni 1957 births Living people 21st-century German chemists