Michael Kuhn

This is the homepage of Michael Kuhn (né Müller). I am from Leipzig and/or Dresden and lived in Pasadena, CA, for three years while studying at Caltech. I did my PhD in the lab of Peer Bork at the EMBL Heidelberg, working on integrating protein-chemical interactions with phenotypic data to predict drug targets and to find the molecular basis of side effects.

Since July 2009, I have been working as a post doc in the labs of Andreas Beyer (Biotec, TU Dresden) and Tony Hyman (MPI-CBG). My main topic of research is an evolutionary analysis of the centrosome. My wife, Christiane Kuhn, and I are happy parents of two boys.

eMail: michaelmckuhnde

Elsewhere: bioCS, a blog, FriendFeed, Twitter, Tumblr

Scientific Interests

How did such a complex organelle like the centrosome evolve? How did functional requirements and components change over time?

I am (still) interested in finding the biomolecular basis of diseases and side effects on the level of protein-protein interactions. Can we pinpoint known side effects to target proteins? Can we benefit from a global view on drug-target interactions?

Underlying tools that I built together with others are: STITCH, SIDER, and MATADOR.

Scientific Vita

An affair with chemistry in high school led me twice to the International Chemistry Olympiad. However, I learned from hands-on experience in organic chemistry lab that I did not want to pursue a wet-lab career. Therefore I decided to study computer science at Caltech, where it was also possible to put an emphasis on biochemistry. Caltech's Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) provided me with the opportunity to work in David Baker's lab in Seattle. During a year-long study term in Dresden, I worked on automatically analyzing single molecule force spectroscopy spectra with Daniel Müller. Later, I worked in Michael Schroeder's lab on protein-protein interfaces, again with SURF funding. I received my PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) from the University of Heidelberg with summa cum laude after research in the lab of Peer Bork at the EMBL in Heidelberg. The topic of my PhD thesis was: "Integrating chemical and protein interactions: From interaction networks to human phenotypes."

Publications