Metals. Microbes. Metabolism. 

The Manesis lab is a bioinorganic chemistry group focused on structural and mechanistic studies of metalloenzymes. Specifically, we are interested in identifying novel metallocofactors within large, unexplored protein superfamilies through rigorous genome mining and bioinformatics approaches. With an emphasis on identifying new metalloenzyme cofactors involved in microbial metabolisms such as the oxidative stress response and metal homeostasis, we can rationalize how nature has diversified the chemistry it accomplishes using a single cofactor. We are motivated by nature’s ability to repurpose a limited set of ligands and metals for an unlimited amount of chemistry. Students in the Manesis lab will become proficient in a variety of techniques including (but not limited to): (i) heterologous protein expression and purification, (ii) EPR, IR, stopped-flow, Mössbauer, and UV-Vis-nIR spectroscopies, (iii) protein crystallography, (iv) bioinformatics, (v) kinetic analysis, and (vi) computational approaches such as DFT.