Dr. Georgios Dalkas is a Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Pharmacy holding a PhD degree in Biomolecular simulations and Biomolecular NMR from the University of Patras and +15 years of experience in the fields of computational chemistry and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. He graduated from University of Patras in 2003 (Chemistry) and he joined the Lab of Biomolecular NMR, at the department of Pharmacy (University of Patras), in 2005, where he obtained his MSc (2006) and PhD (2011) under the supervision of Prof. Georgios A. Spyroulias. After obtaining his PhD, Dr. Dalkas demonstrated his independent thinking in a wide-ranging interdisciplinary research projects, by using computational and bioinformatics approaches to study the structure of several biological systems. He got specialized in various computational methods for protein analysis, and in particular, computer drug design, molecular modelling and docking simulations, virtual screening approaches, molecular dynamics simulations, protein database searching, prediction and analysis of biomolecular structures. As a post-doctoral researcher at the 3BIO – Genomic and structural bioinformatics group (Université Libre de Bruxelles) of Prof. Marianne Rooman, he integrated computational methods to study the B-cell epitopes. In that project, Dr. Dalkas advanced his experience in biostatistics and machine learning through his interaction with the leading group of Prof. Rooman at ULB. During that period, Dr. Dalkas has also gained valuable experience in molecular biology techniques working with antigen-antibody complexes (cloning, expression and purification of viral proteins, mutagenesis experiments) at the INRS–Institute Armand-Frappier Research Centre in Quebec (Canada), in the laboratories of Prof. Nicolas Doucet and Prof. Alain Lamarre. The fellow’s experience has been transferred to the Food Protein Functionality Research Group at Heriot-Watt University (Edinburgh, UK), collaborating with Prof. Stephen Euston (PI), carrying out molecular modelling and MD simulation research aimed at understanding the mechanisms of self-association in sterol and sterol ester self-associating oleo-gelators. In 2018 Dr Dalkas was awarded with a Marie Curie Fellowship to investigate with Prof G. Spyroulias the complexity of the activation mechanism of sGC, combining state-of-the-art NMR spectroscopy, biological chemistry and computational methods. Until now, his research results are documented in 24 publications and 2 book chapters.

Most Important Publications:

1. ‘’Insights into the anthrax lethal factor-substrate interaction and selectivity using docking and molecular dynamics simulations.’’, G. A. Dalkas, A. Papakyriakou, A. Vlamis-Gardikas, G. A. Spyroulias, Protein Science, (2009) 18(8), 1774-1785.
2. ‘’Conformational dynamics of the anthrax lethal factor catalytic center.’’, G. A. Dalkas, C. T. Chasapis, P. V. Gkazonis, D. Bentrop, G. A. Spyroulias, Biochemistry, (2010) 49(51), 10767-10769.
3. ‘’SEPIa, a knowledge-driven algorithm for predicting conformational B-cell epitopes from the amino acid sequence.’’, G. A. Dalkas, M. Rooman, BMC Bioinformatics, (2017) 18(1), 95.
4. ‘’Cation-π, amino-π, π-π, and H-bond interactions stabilize antigen-antibody interfaces.’’, G. A. Dalkas, F. Teheux, J. M. Kwasigroch, M. Rooman, Proteins: Structure, Function and Bioinformatics, (2014) 82(9), 1734-1746.
5. ‘’Molecular Interactions behind the Self-Assembly and Microstructure of Mixed Sterol Organogels.’’, G. Dalkas, A. B. Matheson, H. Vass, A. Gromov, V. Koutsos, G. O. Lloyd, P. S. Clegg, S. R. Euston, Langmuir, (2018) 34(29), 8629-8638.

Current funding: “NMR insights on the soluble Guanylyl Cyclase conformational dynamics to illuminate the SIGNaling pathway”, Individual Marie Curie Fellow (Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions -IF-2017- Horizon 2020), under grant agreement No [795175].

ORCID iD: https://orcid.org/ 0000-0003-2628-047X

Email: dalkas@upatras.gr