Chemistry

I did my undergraduate studies in Portugal when I developed an interest in Applied Chemistry, within a 5-year Chemical Engineering degree. During this time I had the opportunity to do a number of courses abroad, but it was an Erasmus program in Reading University that brought me into Crystallography. I went back to Portugal determined to find out more about the world of crystals. After my graduation I worked in Protein Crystallography laboratories in Portugal for nearly two years, before I started my PhD at Reading University. Here I worked mostly with biological crystals. I then moved on to a 5-year Postdoctoral fellowship at Keele University, based in Grenoble where there are facilities for Deuteration of biological samples for neutron crystallography studies among many other structural tools.

In 2007 I became a Lecturer at Keele University, where I now add the privilege of working on a campus where both neutron and x-ray world leading facilities are, to the opportunity to teach Structural Biology. It is a challenging job but I hope to learn a lot with it and share my enthusiasm with Crystallography as a unique tool to look into the atomic world.

At Grenoble I am co-responsible for a low resolution neutron diffractometer (D16) and a Laue diffractometer (LADI-III).  The two beamlines cover a wide range of structural information in crystallography, from crystal structures of complex systems such as membrane proteins or viruses to smaller proteins and oligonucleotides. D16 also finds applications in crystallogenesis, while LADI-III allows for the determination of accurate positions of hydrogen/deuterium atoms. This detailed level of structural information is essential in grasping enzymatic mechanisms and molecular recognition.

Deuterium labeling of the sample plays an essential role for the use of contrast variation techniques, allowing for better signal-to-noise ratios (crystals as small as 0.01mm³ can be used) and for different components of an assembly to be highlighted, for example in a protein/DNA complex. At the ILL/EMBL Deuteration Laboratory, in Grenoble, we focus on Deuteration techniques for biological samples. The “D-Lab” is where I currently prepare crystal samples to study complexes of DNA with potential anti-cancer drugs, as well as for neutron studies of food-related systems such as thaumatin (see image).

See also the Macromolecular Structure Research Group and my page at Institut Laue-Langevin.

• CHE-20006 : Biophysical Chemistry
• CHE-30031 : Medicinal and Biomolecular Chemistry
• MSci in Scientific Research Training (Placement supervisor at the I.L.L.)
• Hercules course - Neutron crystallography tutor, Grenoble, France
• M2 Nucleic Acids Course - invited lecturer in Nucleic Acid Structures, Joseph Fourier University, Grenoble