Protein Organelles, Microbial Metabolism, and Pathogenicity
Cellular compartmentalization and spatial control are defining features of life. Similar to eukaryotes, many prokaryotes compartmentalize their cytosol to carry out specialized metabolic reactions, prevent toxicity and store nutrients. To achieve this goal, prokaryotes rely on protein-based instead of membrane-based strategies. Our main interest currently lies on encapsulin nanocompartments, the newest class of microbial protein organelles. Protein organelles enable specialized biochemistry and are so far known to be involved in nutrient utilization, iron and sulfur metabolism, and stress resistance. Our overall goal is to explore and understand the functional diversity of protein organelles, specifically their contribution to pathogenicity and virulence, and to investigate their contribution towards human health and disease. #Biochemistry | #Structural Biology | #Microbiology
Engineering Protein Assemblies for Biomedicine and Bionanotechnology
Self-assembly is the common theme connecting various types of protein assemblies ranging from protein organelles to bacteriophages. These large protein complexes possess defined nanoarchitectures of uniform size and shape. Their biological origin makes them inherently biocompatible and allows facile genetic functionalization, thus positioning them as ideal starting points for creative nanoscale and protein engineering approaches. Our overall goal is to design and build protein assemblies to tackle real world problems in biomedicine, catalysis and sustainability. Our efforts will result in novel living diagnostics and therapeutics, programmable nanomaterials, nanoreactors, and molecular protein-based tools to advance cell and structural biology. #Synthetic Biology | #Protein Engineering
Mining Microbial Genomes for Novel Enzymes and Antibiotics
One strategy to address the global problem of increasing microbial antibiotic resistance is the continual discovery of new chemical matter often found in underexplored niches and the characterization of enzymes able to specifically tailor these antibiotic scaffolds. Powerful bioinformatic approaches have been developed to reveal and harness the diversity of chemical transformations and entities encoded in microbial genomes, thus allowing us to shed light on what is often referred to as microbial dark matter. Our overall goal is to discover novel bioactive microbial metabolites - currently specifically modified cyclic dipeptide natural products - elucidate their biosynthesis, and study their bioactivities. #Enzymology | #Bioinformatics | #Natural Products
