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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

Plasmodium falciparum dipeptidyl aminopeptidase 3 activity is important for efficient erythrocyte invasion by the malaria parasite.
C Lehmann, MSY Tan, LE de Vries, I Russo, MI Sanchez, DE Goldberg, E Deu
– PLoS Pathog
(2018)
14,
e1007031
(doi: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1007031)
Time-gated detection of protein-protein interactions with transcriptional readout.
MW Kim, W Wang, MI Sanchez, R Coukos, M von Zastrow, AY Ting
– eLife
(2017)
6,
e30233
(doi: 10.7554/elife.30233)
A light- and calcium-gated transcription factor for imaging and manipulating activated neurons
W Wang, CP Wildes, T Pattarabanjird, MI Sanchez, GF Glober, GA Matthews, KM Tye, AY Ting
– Nat Biotechnol
(2017)
35,
864
(doi: 10.1038/nbt.3909)
Light-Controlled Cellular Internalization and Cytotoxicity of Nucleic Acid-Binding Agents: Studies in Vitro and in Zebrafish Embryos.
C Penas, MI Sánchez, J Guerra-Varela, L Sanchez, ME Vázquez, JL Mascareñas
– Chembiochem : a European journal of chemical biology
(2015)
17,
37
(doi: 10.1002/cbic.201500455)
Design of a highly selective quenched activity-based probe and its application in dual color imaging studies of cathepsin S activity localization.
K Oresic Bender, L Ofori, WA van der Linden, ED Mock, GK Datta, S Chowdhury, H Li, E Segal, M Sanchez Lopez, JA Ellman, CG Figdor, M Bogyo, M Verdoes
– Journal of the American Chemical Society
(2015)
137,
4771
(doi: 10.1021/jacs.5b00315)
Sequence-selective DNA binding with cell-permeable oligoguanidinium–peptide conjugates
J Mosquera, MI Sánchez, J Valero, J de Mendoza, ME Vázquez, JL Mascareñas
– Chem Commun (Camb)
(2015)
51,
4811
(doi: 10.1039/c4cc09525a)
Synthetic peptides caged on histidine residues with a bisbipyridyl ruthenium(ii) complex that can be photolyzed by visible light
J Mosquera, MI Sánchez, JL Mascareñas, M Eugenio Vázquez
– Chem Commun (Camb)
(2015)
51,
5501
(doi: 10.1039/c4cc08049a)
Fluorescence-labeled bis-benzamidines as fluorogenic DNA minor-groove binders: photophysics and binding dynamics.
J Bordello, MI Sánchez, ME Vázquez, JL Mascareñas, W Al-Soufi, M Novo
– Chemistry (Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, Germany)
(2014)
21,
1609
(doi: 10.1002/chem.201404926)
MitoBlue: a nontoxic and photostable blue-emitting dye that selectively labels functional mitochondria.
MI Sánchez, J Martínez-Costas, JL Mascareñas, ME Vázquez
– ACS Chem Biol
(2014)
9,
2742
(doi: 10.1021/cb500552f)
Ruthenium bipyridyl complexes as photocleavable dimerizers: deactivation of DNA-binding peptides using visible light.
J Mosquera, MI Sánchez, ME Vázquez, JL Mascareñas
– Chem Commun (Camb)
(2014)
50,
10975
(doi: 10.1039/c4cc04512b)
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Research Interest Groups

Telephone number

01223 336410 (shared)

Email address

mis40@cam.ac.uk

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