Prof. Dr. Frauke Gräter
Director at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Mainz

Abstract
Tissues are perpetually subjected to mechanical forces. We know for nearly a century that high mechanical load on polymer materials - be it a shoe sole or rubber band – causes the rupture of chemical bonds and generates mechanoradicals. We uncovered the very same mechanism in biology: radicals form by stretching collagen, a major protein material of our tissues, even under stresses far below tissue failure. Using experiments and conjunction with simulations and machine learning we reveal how collagen tames its radicals and converts them in a highly controlled fashion to oxidative stress. I will give some insights into how we leverage graph neural networks and attention mechanisms to dissect the underlying molecular mechanisms. We currently generalize the concept of mechanoradicals to other proteins and tissues, and explore how it is related to tissue health, ageing and disease.

Bio
Frauke Gräter has joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz as Director in 2024, and is heading the department „Biomolecular Mechanics“. Frauke studied chemistry at the Universities of Tübingen, Kyoto, and Heidelberg, and completed her doctorate at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen. After that, she spent her postdoctoral period at the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University in New York. She then took up a junior group leader position at the MPG-CAS Partner Institute for Computational Biology, after which she continued her scientific career at the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies in Heidelberg as a group leader and later as a professor at the University of Heidelberg.
Frauke Gräter investigates how proteins have been designed to specifically respond to mechanical forces in the cellular environment or as a biomaterial. To this end, her group uses and advances molecular simulations and data-driven computational methods, in combination with biophysical experiments.
She is recipient of the PRACE Ada Lovelace Award 2017 and has been awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. Among others, she is member of the Senate of the Leibniz Association, fellow of the Max Planck School Matter to Life, Editorial Board Member of the Biophysical Journal, and member of the excellence cluster 3DMM2O.

Location
Seminar Room, 0.125, Kussmaulallee 2
Location Details

Zoom
https://eu02web.zoom-x.de/j/62495649691?pwd=faGT2qhVbaVTYDu9KPCLERNVaEROVe.1
Meeting-ID: 624 9564 9691
Kenncode: 582716