Research at Chemical Mechanisms of Life
The centre brings together expertise in RNA, metabolites, proteins and bioorganic synthesis to gain a deeper understanding of the chemical mechanisms in living systems. By combining our knowledge, we wish to bring about major advances in deciphering and controlling chemical processes down to atom-scale resolution at the heart of life.
Associated research groups
Ingela Lanekoff's group
This group works on developing analytical tools for the detection, characterization, and quantification of small molecules in complex biological samples, such as tissue sections or cells, using mass spectrometry. A main focus area is method development for imaging mass spectrometry and surface analysis.
Máté Erdélyi's group
This group investigates fundamental organic chemistry concepts, such as chemical bonding, molecular structure and reactivity with a focus on biological systems, biomolecules and natural products. Method development for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) is another focus area.
Katja Petzold's group
This group investigates the structural biophysics of RNA, aiming to understand how RNA molecules change their structures in order to perform functions. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR) and other biophysical techniques are used and developed.
Sebastian Westenhoff's group
This group aims to understand structural dynamics of biological photoactive systems. Time-resolved crystallography is used to make molecular movies of photoactive proteins transiting between their illuminated and non-illuminated states.
Postdoctoral researchers at the centre
William Darling
Initially trained as a medicinal chemist, Billy worked on developing novel weight-loss and analgesic drugs during his undergraduate studies at Queen Mary University of London and his time at Nxera Pharma UK. After his time in industry, he returned to academia to pursue a PhD in peptide chemistry and NMR spectroscopy at University College London. Enthused by NMR spectroscopy, Billy then moved to Uppsala to conduct further research in method development and 3D structure determination under the guidance of Máté Erdélyi, with a particular interest in macrocyclic peptides.
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Candice Gautier
Candice was awarded her PhD from the Sapienza University of Rome in 2019. Throughout her career she has become a protein engineering expert with the purpose to better understand structure - function relationships. Her PhD focused on the understanding of folding mechanisms of protein domains within multidomains. Her latest works include evolving enzymes in better biocatalysts and developing a high-throughput screening method to select enzyme candidates based on their catalytic properties. Within the research center, she will work with proteins involved in the circadian clock.
Vivek Junghare
Vivek obtained his doctoral degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in Roorkee, India. His research is focused on computational biology. He has worked on method development for analyzing peptides/protein structure-function using in-silico approaches. He has expertise in Python and C programming languages and structural bioinformatics. RNAs, especially mRNA and miRNAs, are responsible for essential functions, including gene regulation and catalyzing chemical reactions vital for life. Hence, he will work on the sequence and structure-based analysis of RNAs to understand their functional role.
Gábor Tóth
Gábor was awarded his PhD in chemical sciences at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2022. During his doctoral program, he specialized in fundamental developments for separation sciences and their biomedical applications for identifying and quantitating (glyco)proteins and glycosaminoglycans interrelated with cancer development. During his postdoctoral work, he focuses on technical developments for single-cell metabolomics along with mass spectrometry imaging of lipid mediators in biological specimens such as human multiple sclerosis brain tissue sections.
Wouter A. Remmerswaal
Wouter obtained his Ph.D. in 2024 from Leiden University, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Jeroen D. C. Codée. He researched the reaction mechanisms of glycosylation reactions using a combinatory approach of computational and synthetic carbohydrate chemistry. Currently, he is working in the halogen bonding group led by Prof. Dr. Máté Erdélyi. Here, he is developing synthetic routes towards halonium ion complexes that can act as halogen transfer reagents in asymmetric halogenation reactions, and spectroscopically and computationally investigating the reaction mechanisms involved.
