Dr. Ronald Frank studied chemistry at the University of Hamburg, Germany, with special training in organic chemistry, biochemistry and microbiology. He received his diploma in 1974 and his Ph.D degree in organic chemistry in 1979. He held postdoctoral appointments with H. Köster at Hamburg University and with H. Blöcker at the GBF, the German National Research Center for Biotechnology in Braunschweig, Germany. In 1983 was appointed senior scientist in the research group "DNA-Synthesis" at the GBF. Currently he is the head of the research group for "Molecular Recognition" within the division of "Cell Biology and Immunology" at the GBF. His primary research interest concerns the development of new methods for the deciphering and the design of biomolecular interactions. An important strategic concept in this work is the evolutionary principle of selection from diversity, applying simultaneous multiple as well as stochastic syntheses (chemical and enzymatical) to the preparation of combinatorial repertoires of model structures to be utilized as tools in the systematic structure/function analysis of biological molecules. The following list of selected publications gives a survey of his field of research activities. Köster, H., Blöcker, H., Frank, R., Geussenhainer, S. and Kaiser, W. (1975) Total synthesis of a structural gene for the human peptide hormone Angiotensin II. Hoppe-Seyler's Z. Physiol. Chem. 356, 1585-1593. Frank, R., Heikens, W., Heisterberg-Moutsis, G. and Blöcker, H. (1983) A new general approach for the simultaneous chemical synthesis of large numbers of oligonucleotides: segmental solid supports. Nucleic Acids Res. 11, 4365-4377. Blöcker, H. and Frank, R. (1984) Gene machines and a new approach. Nature/Biotechnology 2, 694-695. Breslauer, K.J., Frank, R., Blöcker, H. and Marky, L.A. (1986) Predicting DNA duplex stability from the base sequence. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 83, 3746-3750. Frank, R. and Döring, R. (1988) Simultaneous multiple peptide synthesis under continous flow conditions on cellulose paper discs as segmental solid supports. Tetrahedron, 44, 6031-6040. Blankemeyer-Menge, B. and Frank, R. (1988) Simultaneous multiple synthesis of protected peptide fragments on `Allyl'-functionalized cellulose disc supports. Tetrahedron Lett., 29, 46, 5871-5874. Frank, R. (1992) Spot-Synthesis: An easy technique for the positionally addressable, parallel chemical synthesis on a membrane support. Tetrahedron, 48, 9217-9232. Frank, R. (1993) Strategies and techniques in simultaneous solid phase synthesis based on the segmentation of membrane type supports. BioMed. Chem. Lett. Symposium-in-Print on "The Generation of Molecular Diversity", 3, 425-430. Hoffmann, S. and Frank, R. (1994) A new safety-catch peptide-resin linkage for the direkt release of peptides into aqueous buffers. Tetrahedron Letters, 35, 7763-7766 Frank, R. (1995) Simultaneous and combinatorial chemical synthesis techniques for the generation and screening of molecular diversity. J. Biotechnol., 41, 259-272. Tegge, W., Frank, R., Hofmann, F. and Dostmann, R.G. (1995) Determination of cyclic nucleotide-dependent protein kinase substrate specificity with peptide libraries on cellulose paper. Biochemistry, 34, 10569-10577. Schmidt, T.G.M., Koepke, J., Frank, R. and Skerra, A. (1996) Molecular interaction between the Strep-tag affinity peptide and its cognate target, streptavidin. J. Mol. Biol.,255, 753-766. Tegge, W.J. and Frank, R. (1997) Peptide Synthesis on Sepharose Beads. J. Peptide Res., 49, 355-362. Niebuhr, K., Ebel, F., Frank, R., Reinhard, M., Domann, E., Carl, U.D., Walter, U., Gertler, F.B., Wehland, J., and Chakraborty, T. (1997) Identification of a novel proline-rich motif as the ligand for the EVH1 domain, a protein module present in the VASP-Mena family. EMBO J. 17, 5433-5444. Dittrich, F., Tegge, W. and Frank, R. (1998) "Cut and Combine": An easy membrane-supported combinatorial synthesis technique. Bioorg. Med. Chem. Lett., 8, 2351-2356. Web link to GBF, AG Molecular Recognition http://www.gbf.de/bereiche/uk/div_zib/mrk_home.html