38th BrJAC Webinar

Metallomics, metalloproteomics and complementary approaches to study zinc in biological systems

Abstract:

Zinc is essential for all life forms, with zinc proteomes estimated to make up 5-10% of organisms’ proteomes. Zinc binds to proteins through labile, non-covalent bonds. This gives rise to the highly dynamic nature of zinc-protein interactions, with a range of momentous consequences, in e.g. haemostasis, insulin signalling and brain function. It is therefore critical to develop methodologies to study such dynamic interactions, with omics approaches becoming increasingly important. The webinar will give an overview of the importance of zinc in biology, highlight analytical challenges, and present examples from both our own and other’s work.

Biography:

Claudia Blindauer is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Warwick, UK. She graduated with a Diplom Chemie from the University of Freiburg, Germany, before moving to the University of Basel, Switzerland, where she worked with Prof. Helmut Sigel. For her post-doctoral work, she moved to the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, to work with Prof. Peter Sadler.

At Warwick, she held the Royal Society Olga Kennard Fellowship from 2004 to 2009. Her research concerns structure, dynamics and function of proteins involved in metal (in particular zinc) homeostasis in a variety of biological systems, including bacteria, plants and animals. Her team’s biophysical (NMR spectroscopy and native ESI-MS), bioanalytical (metallomics and metalloproteomics), bioinformatics (genome mining and structural modelling) and cell culture approaches have given insights on zinc sensing, uptake and storage in cyanobacterial cells, discrimination between zinc and cadmium by plant and invertebrate metallothioneins, and mammalian blood plasma zinc speciation and its impact on cellular uptake into cells.NAPI-HC (hydrocarbons). He has experience in chemistry with emphasis on the development of solid-phase preconcentration systems using chemically imprinted polymers, nanomaterials, and mixed oxides as well as green liquid-liquid microextraction using chromatographic, electroanalytical, and spectroanalytical techniques. Currently, he is CNPq scholarship researcher level 1C, has published more than 260 papers, 23 chapter books, 13 patents, and supervised 30 master dissertations and 21 doctoral theses, 5 postdocs, and 75 undergraduate students. Tarley has h index of 41 by ISI and more than 5900 citations in the Web of Science and in the years (2022-2024) he has been ranked among the top 100 chemistry scientists in Brazil (Research.com).