PROBio-Africa Host labs

Name: Crotti, Michele 

Research Area(s): Protein Engineering and Enzyme Discovery

Affiliation: University College London

Country: United Kingdom

Website 

Scientific Interests:

My research interests are part of the broad fields of Sustainable Chemistry, Biocatalysis and Enzyme Engineering. Enzymes are intrinsically biodegradable and non-toxic, catalyse chemical reactions with exquisite selectivity. Moreover, they can be combined into multi-enzymatic procedures to avoid the accumulation of instable intermediates, purification steps, and to reduce the use of costly cofactors. Therefore, enzymes are considered precious tools for the reduction of the environmental impact of the chemical industry. Millions of years of evolution have resulted in a natural repertoire of extremely efficient enzymes, but often too specialized in their metabolic-relevant transformations. Major goals of my research are:

• Enzymes’ characterization and biocatalytic application for the sustainable preparation of fine and specialty chemicals. Enzymes’ natural diversity provide a bottomless reservoir of biocatalysts yet to be exhaustively explored, and the toolkit of biocatalytic reactions available for synthetic applications still limited. The cloning and characterization of new enzymes active on non-natural substrates gives the opportunity to unlock new alternatives. 
• Laboratory evolution of enzymes: the goal is combining different approaches of protein engineering (computer-assisted rational design, directed evolution, continuous evolution), to expand their capability to transform non-natural substrates, catalyse new-to-nature transformations, and to adapt them to non-physiological/ industrial conditions. Examples of enzyme families of interest are Ene-reductases, Alcohol dehydrogenases, Transaminases.

This offer applies to trainees/researchers eligible for the following fellowships

All fellowships (not restricted to fellowship holders)

Contact:

m.crotti@ucl.ac.uk