Peter Terpstra

Peter Terpstra is a molecular biologist turned into a bioinformatician. His bioinformatic specialisations include datamining, sequence analysis and gene regulation. His most recent work is about miRNA prediction and regulation in relation to tumour suppression (in cooperation with the UMCG Genetics department), verification of Affymetrix array probes (together with the FSE Bioinformatics group) and prediction of gene regulatory mechanism (together with the UMCG Medical Biology department).

He is also strongly involved in setting up and participating in Bioinformatics courses for PhD students (AIOs), third year biology and life science students and recently for the first year students in the new life sciences curriculum.

He studied biochemistry-molecular biology at the University of Amsterdam, did his PhD work on mitochondrial biogenesis at the University of Groningen, his first postdoc work at the Health Science Center University, Dallas, Texas also about mitochondrial biogenesis. After a postdoc period at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam (hormone biochemistry) he returned to the University of Groningen to work on the genetic engineering of the NAD metabolism in bacteria, protein modelling and protein engineering. Around 1985 he started the University DNA sequencing facility at the Biochemistry department. This facility moved ca. 1991 to the Medical faculty (UMCG). With the DNA sequence analysis his interest shifted from practical molecular biology to full blown bioinformatics. In september 2006 he joined the Unit of Genetic Epidemiology and Bioinformatics within the Department of Epidemiology (UMCG).