Macromolecular Crystallography
Current Research Interests
The main focus of my current reseach is twofold:
i) the nucleotide metabolism of Schistosoma mansoni using structural molecular biology, an effort that has led to the determination of 8 novel structures and a total of 19 unique proteins solubilised between 2014 and 2018.
ii) improving the quality of crystallographic models by introducing excited states, which will allow for direct interpretation of behaviour of metal centres in XFEL and synchrotron alike, a step beyond what is currently done through indirect assessment with multiple spectroscopic techniques.
At the beamline level, I am interested in methods for improving the throughput while keeping the same data quality level, optimising the usage of the hardware, and developing standards for quantitative assessment of diffraction from protein crystals.
Collaborations
- Leonardo Bernasconi - STFC - Electronic excitations and macromolecular crystallography.
- Ray Owens (Oxford Univ.), Nick Furnham (LSHTM), Floriano Paes (Fiocruz-Rio) - Structural characterization of Thioredoxin Glutathione Reductase from Schistosoma mansoni (SmTGR).
- Frank von Delft and the XChem team at Diamond Light Source and the Structure Genomics Consortium in Oxford.
- Humberto Pereira and Richard Garrat - IFSC/USP - Brazil - Nucleotide Metabolism of Schistosoma mansoni.
