Dr Quentin Kaas
Research Fellow
The University of Queensland
Quentin is an expert in molecular modelling and structural bioinformatics of disulfide-rich peptides, which he uses to design ultra-stable molecules for biotechnological applications. He has a particular interest on conotoxins (30 publications), which are neuroactive peptides expressed by marine carnivorous cone snails and have applications as probes in neuroscience and as drug leads. He has created the ConoServer, a specialised and highly accessed database on conotoxins, which also provides specialised bioinformatics tools to help in their discovery from transcriptomics and proteomics data. He also uses molecular dynamics simulations and binding-free energy estimates to model the interaction of peptide toxins with neuronal ion channels.