Dr. Ratna SinghUniversity of Münster Department of Plant Biology and Biotechnology Schlossplatz 8 48143 Münster Germany |
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| Email: | singhr@uni-muenster.de | |
Molecular recognition, enzymatic production and fingerprinting analysis of chitosan oligomers from Bacillus spec chitosanase
Dr. Ratna Singh (the third MCGS post-doctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Moerschbacher) is a bioinformatician modeling 3D structures of glyco-relevant enzymes such as pectin and xylan acetyl esterases (in collaboration with Prof. Schols of Wageningen University), ulvan lyase (in collaboration with Rebecca Melcher and the group of Prof. Lalitha) and a bacterial chitosanase (in collaboration with Sven Basa). She predicted amino acid residues likely to be involved in substrate binding and catalysis, and made suggestions for site directed mutagenesis to impact or optimize substrate specificities. Some of these have already been performed by others in the group, but she now also started to learn some wet-lab techniques herself, supported by Sven Basa. The mutated enzymes will be characterized by mass spectrometric analysis of the oligomers produced (in collaboration with the group of Dr. Mormann), and by ITC analysis of the direct interaction between the muteins and selected chitosan oligomers (in collaboration with the group of Prof. Swamy). The data obtained will be used to verify the predictions of substrate specificities by a virtual chitosan hydrolase.
