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National R&D

PROPELLER

Investigation of a new class of beta-propeller enzymes

Principal Investigator
20230503_213251 - Pedro Leao
Pedro Leão

Pedro Nuno da Costa Leão

Group Leader

Pedro Leão is Coordinating Researcher at CIIMAR, where he leads the Cyanobacterial Natural Products Research Group as well as the Marine Biotechnology Research Line. He graduated in Biochemistry from the University of Porto (2005) and went on to obtain the MSc (2006) and PhD (2010) degrees from the same university. He undertook postdoctoral studies at CIIMAR, Scripps Institution of Oceanography (UCSD, USA) and Harvard University (USA). In 2018, after receiving an ERC Starting Grant, he established his research group at CIIMAR. His group’s research is focused on the chemistry, biosynthesis and chemical ecology of cyanobacterial natural products.

RESEARCH GROUPS:

PROPELLER builds on the recent discovery, by our group, of an unprecedented enzymatic reaction catalyzed by a cyanobacterial enzyme – BrtB. This beta-propeller enzyme can use a wide range of fatty acid carboxylates as nucleophiles in an esterification reaction with secondary alkyl halides.

PROPELLER will explore the diversity of BrtB homologs found among cyanobacterial genomes for additional new reactivities. Furthermore, because biosynthetic gene clusters encoding BrtB homologs are virtually unexplored, PROPELLER will use these clusters to guide the discovery of natural products with novel scaffolds.

Research Teams
Leader Institution
CIIMAR-UP
Program
FCT
Funding
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