<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.9.5">Jekyll</generator><link href="/horst.lechner/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="/horst.lechner/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2026-03-26T07:38:13+01:00</updated><id>/horst.lechner/feed.xml</id><title type="html">AG Enzyme Design</title><subtitle>Jekyll theme for research project websites 🧫</subtitle><author><name>Horst Lechner</name></author><entry><title type="html">Christoph and David defended their Master’s thesis</title><link href="/horst.lechner/blog/2026/master-defense/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Christoph and David defended their Master’s thesis" /><published>2026-03-20T00:00:00+01:00</published><updated>2026-03-20T00:00:00+01:00</updated><id>/horst.lechner/blog/2026/master_defense</id><content type="html" xml:base="/horst.lechner/blog/2026/master-defense/"><![CDATA[<p>Today, David Stoll and Christoph Sojer defended their master’s theses. They both did incredible work designing a de novo enzyme for a non-natural reaction and increasing the soluble protein expression of heme-dependent proteins, repectively.
Special thanks to <a href="https://www.aiproteindesign.com/">Noelia Ferruz<a></a>, who hosted David for a few months (funded via Erasmus+), strengthening his knowledge of molecular dynamics.</a></p>]]></content><author><name>Horst Lechner</name></author><category term="master" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Today, David Stoll and Christoph Sojer defended their master’s theses. They both did incredible work designing a de novo enzyme for a non-natural reaction and increasing the soluble protein expression of heme-dependent proteins, repectively. Special thanks to Noelia Ferruz, who hosted David for a few months (funded via Erasmus+), strengthening his knowledge of molecular dynamics.]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">New FWF-financed project launched in November 2025</title><link href="/horst.lechner/blog/2025/fwf-enhanz/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="New FWF-financed project launched in November 2025" /><published>2025-11-01T00:00:00+01:00</published><updated>2025-11-01T00:00:00+01:00</updated><id>/horst.lechner/blog/2025/FWF_enhanz</id><content type="html" xml:base="/horst.lechner/blog/2025/fwf-enhanz/"><![CDATA[<p>🎉 We are excited to announce the launch of our new FWF-funded project on computational protein engineering, starting November 2025 with a new PhD student joining the team!</p>

<p>Many proteins with biotechnological and pharmaceutical applications are difficult to produce at scale or lack sufficient stability — driving up production costs and ecological footprint. Our new project tackles this challenge head-on using machine learning-based computational tools to predict targeted amino acid substitutions that boost protein stability and production yield, without compromising function or structure.</p>

<p>🔬 Using two model proteins as testbeds, we will benchmark different computational design strategies and validate the most promising ones experimentally in bacteria — testing for stability, activity, and beyond. Building on these insights, our goal is to establish a general, broadly applicable workflow for protein sequence optimization.
Stay tuned for updates as the project unfolds! 🚀</p>]]></content><author><name>Horst Lechner</name></author><category term="funding" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[🎉 We are excited to announce the launch of our new FWF-funded project on computational protein engineering, starting November 2025 with a new PhD student joining the team!]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Invited talk at EMRS-Fall 2024 in Warsawa</title><link href="/horst.lechner/blog/2024/emrs-talk/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Invited talk at EMRS-Fall 2024 in Warsawa" /><published>2024-10-05T00:00:00+02:00</published><updated>2024-10-05T00:00:00+02:00</updated><id>/horst.lechner/blog/2024/emrs_talk</id><content type="html" xml:base="/horst.lechner/blog/2024/emrs-talk/"><![CDATA[<p>I was quite honored to give a talk about our advances in the <a href="https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/863170">ARTIBLED</a> project, aiming to design fluorescent proteins to be used as phosphor in LEDs. For me, as a newbie in material sciences, is was a great chance to get a very different perspective on applications of proteins.</p>]]></content><author><name>Horst Lechner</name></author><category term="talk" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[I was quite honored to give a talk about our advances in the ARTIBLED project, aiming to design fluorescent proteins to be used as phosphor in LEDs. For me, as a newbie in material sciences, is was a great chance to get a very different perspective on applications of proteins.]]></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Review “Computational tools for enzyme design”</title><link href="/horst.lechner/blog/2024/chembiochem-review/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Review “Computational tools for enzyme design”" /><published>2024-07-25T00:00:00+02:00</published><updated>2024-07-25T00:00:00+02:00</updated><id>/horst.lechner/blog/2024/chembiochem_review</id><content type="html" xml:base="/horst.lechner/blog/2024/chembiochem-review/"><![CDATA[<p>Together with the <a href="https://www.tugraz.at/institute/ibc/research/research-groups/protein-design">Oberdorfer Lab</a> we published recently a concise <a href="https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbic.202400092">overview</a> of state-of-the-art methods in enzyme engineering, ranging from property engineering to the de-novo design of enzymes, with an emphasis on user-friendly tools that are freely accessible as web-interfaces.</p>

<p>It explains and highlights features and problems of tools for Structure Prediction, Enzyme Discovery and Classification as well as Enzyme engineering.</p>]]></content><author><name>Horst Lechner</name></author><category term="publication" /><category term="methods" /><category term="review" /><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Our [review](https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/cbic.202400092) is online]]></summary></entry></feed>