Interaction of Metal Ions with RNA

Our research is situated in the wide field of Bioinorganic Chemistry, i.e. at the interface of Coordination Chemistry, Structural Biology, and Biochemistry. We thereby focus on the manifold interrelations between metal ions and nucleic acids in general, i.e. in ribozymes and riboswitches, but also in modified DNA used for nanotechnology.

A large variety of experimental tools, including biochemical and classical chemical syntheses, diverse spectroscopic techniques, potentiometric and kinetic measurements, FRET, X-ray crystallography and most importantly NMR spectroscopy are applied in our group, which hosts Chemists, Biochemists as well as Biologists at the moment.