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Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry

 

Dr Mateo Isidro Sanchez Lopez

Wellcome Trust Fellow

Research

Dr Mateo Sanchez holds a Wellcome Trust Career Development Award in the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry. His group works at the frontier between chemistry and biology. He aims to apply the principles of chemistry in order to unlock our understanding of cell biology and using biology to create new chemistry.  Specifically, he plans to develop new molecular tools leveraging optogenetics and protein engineering for cell biology and neuroscience. Another part of his research program will focus on the engineering of artificial metalloenzymes to catalyze new chemical reactions. 

Biography

Mateo Sanchez received his PhD in organic chemistry in 2014 from the University of Santiago de Compostela. The focus of his thesis was on the design and synthesis of fluorescent DNA binders.  In 2015, he joined the group of Professor Alice Ting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and later in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University where he was awarded with an EMBO long-term postdoctoral fellowship. In 2020, Mateo joined the Synthetic Biology Centre in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, to work with Professor Tom Ellis to gain further expertise in synthetic biology. Mateo was awarded with a Marie-Curie Fellowship for a project involving the design of genetic circuits to study DNA repair mechanisms.

Now recruiting

Currently, we are hiring two postdoctoral researchers to start as soon as possible. We are looking for backgrounds in (1) organic synthesis, organometallic chemistry, chemical biology and (2) molecular biology, protein engineering, directed evolution, yeast genetics, and phage display. Please contact me for the time being at mis40@cam.ac.uk.

You can find out more about my research and publications on my web page.

Dr Sanchez Lopez discusses his research

Publications

Synthetic yeast chromosome XI design provides a testbed for the study of extrachromosomal circular DNA dynamics.
BA Blount, X Lu, MRM Driessen, D Jovicevic, MI Sanchez, K Ciurkot, Y Zhao, S Lauer, RM McKiernan, G-OF Gowers, F Sweeney, V Fanfani, E Lobzaev, K Palacios-Flores, RSK Walker, A Hesketh, J Cai, SG Oliver, Y Cai, G Stracquadanio, LA Mitchell, JS Bader, JD Boeke, T Ellis
– Cell genomics
(2023)
3,
100418
(doi: 10.1016/j.xgen.2023.100418)
Synthetic yeast chromosome XI design enables extrachromosomal circular DNA formation on demand
BA Blount, X Lu, MRM Driessen, D Jovicevic, MI Sanchez, K Ciurkot, Y Zhao, S Lauer, RM McKiernan, G-OF Gowers, F Sweeney, V Fanfani, E Lobzaev, K Palacios-Flores, R Walker, A Hesketh, SG Oliver, Y Cai, G Stracquadanio, LA Mitchell, JS Bader, JD Boeke, T Ellis
(2022)
(doi: 10.1101/2022.07.15.500197)
An engineered transcriptional reporter of protein localization identifies regulators of mitochondrial and ER membrane protein trafficking in high-throughput CRISPRi screens.
R Coukos, D Yao, MI Sanchez, ET Strand, ME Olive, ND Udeshi, JS Weissman, SA Carr, MC Bassik, AY Ting
– eLife
(2021)
10,
e69142
(doi: 10.7554/elife.69142)
Transcriptional readout of neuronal activity via an engineered Ca2+-activated protease
MI Sanchez, Q-A Nguyen, W Wang, I Soltesz, AY Ting
– Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(2020)
117,
33186
(doi: 10.1073/pnas.2006521117)
A Molecular Calcium Integrator Reveals a Striatal Cell Type Driving Aversion.
CK Kim, MI Sanchez, P Hoerbelt, LE Fenno, RC Malenka, K Deisseroth, AY Ting
– Cell
(2020)
183,
2003
(doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.11.015)
MitoBlue as a tool to analyze the mitochondria-lysosome communication
MI Sánchez, Y Vida, E Pérez-Inestrosa, JL Mascareñas, ME Vázquez, A Sugiura, J Martínez-Costas
– Sci Rep
(2020)
10,
3528
(doi: 10.1038/s41598-020-60573-7)
Novel broad-spectrum activity-based probes to profile malarial cysteine proteases
MSY Tan, D Davison, MI Sanchez, BM Anderson, S Howell, A Snijders, LE Edgington-Mitchell, E Deu
– PLoS One
(2020)
15,
e0227341
(doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227341)
Directed evolution improves the catalytic efficiency of TEV protease.
MI Sanchez, AY Ting
– Nature Methods
(2019)
17,
167
(doi: 10.1038/s41592-019-0665-7)
Canonical DNA minor groove insertion of bisbenzamidine–Ru( ii ) complexes with chiral selectivity
MI Sánchez, G Rama, R Calo-Lapido, K Ucar, P Lincoln, MV López, M Melle-Franco, JL Mascareñas, ME Vázquez
– Chemical Science
(2019)
10,
8668
(doi: 10.1039/c9sc03053k)
Characterization of P. falciparum dipeptidyl aminopeptidase 3 specificity identifies differences in amino acid preferences between peptide‐based substrates and covalent inhibitors
LE de Vries, MI Sanchez, K Groborz, L Kuppens, M Poreba, C Lehmann, N Nevins, C Withers-Martinez, DJ Hirst, F Yuan, S Arastu-Kapur, M Horn, M Mares, M Bogyo, M Drag, E Deu
– The FEBS journal
(2019)
286,
3998
(doi: 10.1111/febs.14953)
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Research Interest Groups

Telephone number

01223 336410 (shared)

Email address

mis40@cam.ac.uk

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