Enzymology

Principal Investigator

Carlos Cordeiro
Investigador auxiliar, PhD Universidade de Lisboa (1996)

Research

Enzymes are the core of life. It is our mission to unravel enzyme function and structure, exploring the exquisite complexity of life through a systems biology approach. Our final goal is to shape the rules of life to our defined purposes such as changing enzyme specificity, rewiring pathways and creating novel functional macromolecular structures.

Our research comprises the role of protein glycation, the glyoxalase pathway and protein-protein interaction networks in transthyretin amyloidosis as well as a systems biology approach to human infectious diseases, namely leishmaniasis and pneumococcal diseases. We are seeking enzymes and pathways towards novel therapeutic opportunities against these human pathogens.

Our tools are a combination of computational methods, mostly implemented through in house designed software, biochemical and molecular biology techniques, as well as advanced analytic tools, including FTICR-MS, enabling research in metabolomics and proteomics. We are continuously improving these tools and expanding the scope of its applications, most notably in the field of mass spectrometry, with the development of native MS, top-down proteomics and 2DFTICR-MS.

We spawned and support a biotech start-up, BioMimetx, dedicated to deliver innovative solutions for the control of biological proliferation, most notably, biofouling in marine environments.