Burkhard Bechinger

Burkhard Bechinger is full professor for Physical Chemistry and NMR at the University of Strasbourg, senior member of the Institut universitaire de France and known for his biophysical investigations on membrane associated polypeptides, including methodological developments in the field of solid-state NMR on supported lipid bilayers. He obtained his diploma and PhD at the University of Basel, Switzerland followed by three years of postdoctoral assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA supported by an EMBO long-term fellowship.

With the support of a DFG grant he was able to establish his own team at the Max Planck Institute of physiology in Dortmund and became nominated as leader of the Independent Junior Research Group for NMR spectroscopy at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried. He was the first to demonstrate using novel solid-state NMR approaches that cationic amphipathic antimicrobial peptides are most active when aligned along the membrane surface contrasting previous models of transmembrane helical arrangements. This new concept led to the development of different families of drugs that may become important to fight multiresistant pathogens.

The work of the team has expanded to a large number of peptides with many different biomedical applications, membrane proteins and proteic fibers.