Contact
Biography
My research involves use of biophysical techniques such as X-ray crystallography, SAXS and cryoEM to study structural-functional relationships of biological macromolecules in order to treat various human ailments and microbial infections. My current emphasis is on understanding the role of the proteases from the contact activation system by solving the structures of their complexes with natural ligands and inhibitors for novel antithrombotic therapy.
Education
BA in Biochemistry, Hertford College, Oxford, 1984
PhD in X-ray Crystallography, Birkbeck College London, 1993
Previous Appointments
- Attachment Fellow, Molecular and Clinical Sciences Research Institute, St Georfge's, University of London, UK
- Senior research Fellow, Randall Centre for Cell & Molecular Biophysics, King's College London, UK
- Investigador Auxiliar (PI), in charge of X-ray crystallography, Faculdade de Medicina Veterinária, UL, Lisboa, Portugal.
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Departamento QuimÃca, FCT/UNL, Caparica, Portugal.
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Structure Biology Group, Dept. of Biological Sciences, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK.
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Waksman Institute, Rutgers, New Jersey, USA.
- Research Associate Fellow, Birkbeck College, London, UK.
- Research Scientist at Glaxo Group Research Ltd, London, UK.
Expertise Summary
My main experience and expertise since my PhD days have been in structure determination and analyses. I have a full range of experience from cloning the gene in a vector, overexpressing in E. coli, purifying, crystallising, data collection (both in-house and at synchrotrons e.g. SRS (Daresbury), SOLEIL, DIAMOND and ESRF), processing, phasing, model building, refinement and analysis. I am well-versed in the usage of various crystallographic software packages such as CCP4, CNS, SOLVE, SHARP, SnB, O, SHELX, DENZO, PHENIX, COOT, MR (e.g. PHASER, MOLREP, BALBES) etc. I have also carried out SAXS experiments at ESRF and DIAMOND and have used the ATSAS processing suite for SAXS results and analysis. Recently, I am doing CryoEM experiments and am becoming proficient in using processing packages such as CryoSPARC and RELION.