Curriculum vitae

Brief curriculum vitae.

Gert studied biochemistry at the university of Utrecht, The Netherlands and got his PhD in 1983 at the agricultural university of Wageningen, The Netherlands. His PhD project was the study of the assembly process of plant virusses using NMR, EPR, etc. He post-doc-ed in Purdue, Indiana, USA on the Xray structure of the common cold virus, and in Groningen, The Netherlands where he worked on several structures while starting the WHAT IF project. From 1989-1999 he worked at the EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany, where he continued working on (and with) the WHAT IF program.

In the summer of 1999 he took up a position at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands where he built-up the CMBI. At the CMBI Gert continued working on fundamental and applied aspects of protein structure (homology modelling, structure quality, visualization, molecular dynamics, ligand interactions) and of information technology (data-mining, information systems). The 2007 move of the CMBI from the science faculty to the Medical Centre of the Radboud University allowed for more emphasis on the application of bioinformatics in biomedical research.

His main topics of present interest are:

Gert is the author of more than 200 refereed articles of which dozens have been cited more than a hundred times. He has been coordinator of a series of EU grants, most recently of the EMBRACE NoE for software and data interoperability in bioinformatics. He has been a teacher in a series of UNIDO, EMBO, EMBL and EMBnet courses, and he gives about a dozen invited seminars each year.

Some of his recent articles are:

  • The role of calcium ions in the stability and instability of a thermolysin-like protease.
    Eijsink VGH, Matthews BW, Vriend G
    Protein Sci 2011 Jun 6
  • 3DM: systematic analysis of heterogeneous superfamily data to discover protein functionalities.
    Kuipers RK, Joosten HJ, van Berkel WJ, Leferink NG, Rooijen E, Ittmann E, van Zimmeren F, Jochens H, Bornscheuer U, Vriend G, dos Santos VA, Schaap PJ.
    Proteins 2010 78 2101-2013
  • PDB_REDO: automated re-refinement of X-ray structure models in the PDB
    Joosten RP, Salzemann J, Bloch V, Stockinger H, Berglund A, Blanchet C, Bongcam-Rudloff E, Combet C, Da Costa AL, Deleage G, Diarena M, Fabbretti R, Fettahi G, Flegel V, Gisel A, Kasam V, Kervinen T, Korpelainen E, Mattila K,Pagni M, Reichstadt M,Breton V, Tickle IJ, Vriend G
    J. Appl. Cryst. 2009 42 376-384
  • Human dectin-1 deficiency and mucocutaneous fungal infections.
    Ferwerda B, Ferwerda G, Plantinga TS, Willment JA, van Spriel AB, Venselaar H, Elbers CC, Johnson MD, Cambi A, Huysamen C, Jacobs L, Jansen T, Verheijen K, Masthoff L, Morré SA, Vriend G, Williams DL, Perfect JR, Joosten LA, Wijmenga C, van der Meer JW, Adema GJ, Kullberg BJ, Brown GD, Netea MG.
    N Engl J Med 2009 361 1760-1767
  • Tracing evolutionary pressure
    Ye K, Vriend G, IJzerman AP
    Bioinformatics 24 908-915
  • Costs and benefits of processivity in enzymatic degradation of recalcitrant polysaccharides.
    Horn SJ, Sikorski P, Cederkvist JB, Vaaje-Kolstad G, Sorlie M, Synstad B, Vriend G, Varum KM, Eijsink VG.
    Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A 2006 103 18089-18094
  • Correcting ligands, metabolites, and pathways.
    Ott MA, Vriend G.
    BMC Bioinformatics 2006 7 517
  • Traditional biomolecular structure determination by NMR spectroscopy allows for major errors.
    Nabuurs SB, Spronk CA, Vuister GW, Vriend G.
    PLoS Comput Biol 2006 2(2):e9.
  • Mutations of ESRRB encoding estrogen-related receptor beta cause autosomal-recessive nonsyndromic hearing impairment DFNB35.
    Collin RW, Kalay E, Tariq M, Peters T, van der Zwaag B, Venselaar H, Oostrik J, Lee K, Ahmed ZM, Caylan R, Li Y, Spierenburg HA, Eyupoglu E, Heister A, Riazuddin S, Bahat E, Ansar M, Arslan S, Wollnik B, Brunner HG, Cremers CW, Karaguzel A, Ahmad W, Cremers FP, Vriend G, Friedman TB, Riazuddin S, Leal SM, Kremer H.
    Am J Hum Genet 2008 82 125-38
  • PDB improvement starts with data deposition.
    Joosten RP, Vriend G.
    Science 2007 317 195-196
  • Distinct clinical phenotypes associated with a mutation in the mitochondrial translation elongation factor EFTs.
    Smeitink JA, Elpeleg O, Antonicka H, Diepstra H, Saada A, Smits P, Sasarman F, Vriend G, Jacob-Hirsch J, Shaag A, Rechavi G, Welling B, Horst J, Rodenburg RJ, van den Heuvel B, Shoubridge EA.
    Am J Hum Genet 2006 79 869-877
  • MRS: a fast and compact retrieval system for biological data.
    Hekkelman ML, Vriend G.
    Nucleic Acids Res 2005 33 W766-769
  • Identification of functionally conserved residues with the use of entropy-variability plots.
    Oliveira L, Paiva PB, Paiva AC, Vriend G.
    Proteins 2003 52 544-552