Team leader
Secretary :
Nathalie Chaumery
Tel. : 04 38 78 91 02
PresentationOur research team is made up of bioinorganic biochemists, a chemist and a crystallographer interested in the understanding of the molecular structure and the chemical reactivity of complex biological systems containing metal ions. Our metal of interest is Iron (Fe), found in iron-sulfur (Fe-S) clusters, hemes and mono and bi-nuclears non-heme iron centers, and we investigate mechanisms of iron-containing proteins as well as the assembly of their metallic site (Fe-S) as well as iron metalloregulators that control gene expression related to iron. More recently, our research has expanded to include sulfur-active species, which may play regulatory, protective, and catalytic roles. The team's research projects lie at the interface of chemistry and biology, both conceptually and methodologically. Many of our projects have applications in healthcare (discovery and synthesis of new antimicrobial agents), as well as in the energy and environmental sectors (combating global warming, hydrogen production, plastic valorization).
We employ biochemical, spectroscopic, crystallographic, and chemical methods to study our systems. Whenever possible, we collaborate with biologists and microbiologists to understand the biological processes we are interested in, ranging from
in vitro to
in vivo studies.
Most experiments are carried out in a controlled atmosphere, using gloveboxes for anaerobic protein purification, enzymatic assays, spectroscopic studies (UV-visible absorption), protein-protein interaction analyses (BLI device) and sample preparation for analysis by EPR, Mössbauer and EXAFS spectroscopies. Protein crystallization can also be performed under anaerobic conditions within the BioCat team, which manages a crystallogenesis and crystallography platform dedicated to metalloproteins.
Thema and research projects