Rate My Professor Florian Hollfelder

The research in the Hollfelder group addresses fundamental questions at the interface of chemistry and biology through both low- and high-throughput methodologies. Central to their work is understanding the principles governing molecular recognition processes, which facilitates the description, manipulation, and engineering of functional molecules. Key areas include the origins of functional proteins through protein evolution, explanations of biological catalysis and molecular recognition in chemical and biophysical terms, development of biocatalysts for green industrial transformations, and leveraging droplet-based technologies to study cell development. They pioneered extreme miniaturization using picoliter droplets in microfluidic devices to tackle chemical and biological challenges, with applications in biotechnology, synthetic chemistry, and medicine. Representative publications encompass "Balancing specificity and promiscuity in enzyme evolution: Multidimensional activity transitions in the alkaline phosphatase superfamily" (2019), "Evolutionary repurposing of a sulfatase: A new Michaelis complex leads to efficient transition state charge offset" (2018), "Ultrahigh-throughput-directed enzyme evolution by absorbance-activated droplet sorting (AADS)" (2016), and "Ultrahigh-throughput discovery of promiscuous enzymes by picodroplet functional metagenomics" (2015). Additionally, Hollfelder serves as Staff Fellow and Director of Studies in Natural Sciences (Biological) at Trinity Hall.