ITQB: MPC - PhD Theses
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- Structural characterization of mycobacterial arabinofuranosyltransferasesPublication . Rodrigues, José; Archer, Margarida"Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis and is one of the most ancient infectious diseases known to affect mankind. In fact, still to this day, TB is one of the leading causes of death worldwide, as it is estimated that around 1.3 – 1.5 million people die from TB and 10 million new cases appear, every year. In addition, about 370,000 to 450,000 people develop multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB), for which the treatment regimens are longer and present lower success rates.(...)"
- Potential of Ionic Liquids as Protein Drug Delivery SystemsPublication . Alves, Márcia Maria da Silva; Archer, Margarida; Belén, Ana Pereiro"Although therapeutic proteins hold the promise to revolutionize the pharmaceutical industry due to their high specificity and potency, associated with fewer side effects and reduced intrinsic toxicity, their development faces several hurdles. Proteins are intrinsically unstable and highly sensitive to changes in the environment, which lead to short circulation half-lives and hampered the development of stable formulations. To bypass these issues, Drug Delivery Systems (DDS) are being developed to stabilize and deliver these biologics to the human body at therapeutic levels, with improved safety and efficacy."
- Crystallographic studies on membrane and cytoplasmic enzymesPublication . Nogly, Przemyslaw; Archer, MargaridaHaloacid dehalogenase (HAD) superfamily (CL0137), includes a diverse range of enzymes that use an aspartate carboxylate as nucleophile (Aravind et al., 1998; Koonin and Tatusov, 1994). There are ~79000 sequences classified into this superfamily in Pfam database and even more sequences, 148000, classified as HAD-like in the UniProt database (as of 19th February 2013).(...)
- Crystallographic studies on two hyperthermophilic enzymesPublication . Brito, José A.; Archer, MargaridaWhile Aristotle cautioned “everything in moderation”, the Romans, known for their eccentricities, coined the word “extremus”, the superlative of exter, “being on the outside”. By the fifteenth century “extreme” had arrived to English, via Middle French. At the beginning of the 21st century, we know that Earth contains environmental extremes unimaginable to our ancestors of the 19th century. Even more unimaginable to them would be the fact that there are organisms that live, and grow, in these environmental extremes. R. D. MacElroy named these organisms lovers (from the Greek “philos”), “extremophiles” as in “lovers of extreme environments”. The discovery of extremophiles has put vitality in the biotechnology industry as this discipline has exploded in the past 20 years. Several reviews have been published on extremophiles and an increasing number of meetings and conferences are organised around the theme. Genomes of extremophiles have been sequenced, patents have been filed and several funding programmes have been launched namely the US National Science Foundation and NASA’s programmes in “Life in Extreme Environments, Exobiology and Astrobiology”, and the European Union’s “Biotechnology of Extremophiles” and “Extremophiles as Cell Factories”(...)
- Crystallographic and biochemical studies on dissimilatory sulfite reductasesPublication . Oliveira, Tânia Filipa; Archer, Margarida; Pereira, I. A. C.; Kahn, AmirLife on earth is only possible through tightly interwoven material transformations through various cycles. Carbon, nitrogen, fosforous and sulfur, with a special interest in the latter, are essential components of all living organisms and represent the most important elements circulating within the biosphere. During this circulation, sulfur can be found in various oxidation states with transformations occurring both biological and chemically. Dissimilatory sulfate reduction is one of those reactions, where sulfate is reduced to the final product sulfide in order to obtain energy for their metabolism. Sulfate reduction however, is not a favourable energetic reaction, and so sulfate is initially activated to adenosine-5’-phosphosulfate (APS) by ATP sulfurylase. APS is then reduced to sulfite by APS reductase allowing the sulfite reductase to reduce sulfite to the final product sulfide in a six electron transfer reaction. This last step can occur in an assimilatory or dissimilatory way.(...)