The general idea of my research is to use biophysical methods such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Isothermal Titration Calorimetry, UV-Vis, MD-simulation... to understand enzymes mechanism and evolution. 

 

My current research is focused on three projects: 

1) The understanding of protein evolution: My lab. has been studying enzymes involved in bacterial resistance, trying to understand their mechanism of evolution. We have observed that some OXA-enzymes, Acinetobacter baumannii main mechanism of resistance against b-lactams, evolved to better catalysts after improving flexibility of conserved loops; 

 

2) Mechanism of halogenation/dehalogenation: halogen compounds are largely used in medicine and agriculture, including bestselling pharmaceutical drugs, herbicides, pesticides, and insecticides. Therefore, our lab. aims to understand the mechanism of some halogenases and its relationship with conformational dynamics. The idea is to develop better catalysts able to perform halogenation in mild conditions as well as to develop catalyst able to degrade halogenated compounds that accumulate in our environment.

 

3)Identification of proteins allosteric sites for inhibitor design: This project has two different approximation: i) to predict protein allosteric sites and use molecular docking to find new fragments for the design of new b-lactamase inhibitors; ii) apply direct evolution to the allosteric sites and select new and more efficient catalysts.

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