London, England, United Kingdom
My main expertise is the characterization of protein-drug and protein-protein interactions. The investigation of the molecular determinants underlying these interactions has involved a multidisciplinary approach comprising cellular biology, biochemical and computational biology techniques. For instance, I have successfully applied molecular biology methods to clone genes of interest in selected expression vectors. Through my research experience I have expressed and purified several tagged and not tagged proteins in different systems (i.e. bacteria, yeasts and mammalian cells) using different chromatographic technique to perform biochemical and biophysical analyses. I have applied computational Biology (homology modelling, Molecular Dynamics Simulations and docking) to drive site-mutagenesis experiments and to identify the molecular determinants involved in the interactions studied
Pull-down and Co-expression of nesprin Spectrin Repeat (SR) domains with specific binding partners domains. Biophysical Characterization of wild type and mutated proteins. Protein-protein binding characterization. Homology modelling of Nesprin SR Domains. Supervisors: Prof. Franca Fraternali and Prof. Catherine Shanahan
Characterisation of APOBEC3G protein and site-direct mutants: implication to the oligomerizzation, RNA binding and packaging in HIV-1. Molecular Dynamics Simulations and docking of APOBEC3G and RNA. Supervisors: Prof. Franca Fraternali and Prof. Mike Malim
Docking of ROCK inhibitors into structures of ROCK1 and ROCK2. Molecular Dynamics Simulations of ROCK-inhibitor complexes and analysis of their interaction Supervisors: Prof. Franca Fraternali and Prof. Anne Ridley
Interactions of the antiviral APOBEC3 protein and its nucleic acid substrates. Physics Department, Technical University Munich, Garching Germany
Interaction between HIV-related proteins APOBEC3G/F and VIF. Department of Infectious Diseases, King’s College London