BiocatCode Expander Stories:

Beyond the Bench #1

Liu

 

I am thrilled to share that I have completed my first year as a doctoral researcher in the European Doctoral Network BiocatCodeExpander and at the University of Groningen. Everything was new to me after moving to The Netherlands from China. Fortunately, I got used to the life here quickly and enjoyed it. Research-wise, I am working with an interesting biocatalyst that utilizes N-terminal proline as a catalytic residue, 4-oxalocrotonate tautomerase (4-OT). Non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs) were aimed to be incorporated into 4-OT for exploration and improvement of promiscuous activities. Some variants have been prepared successfully so far and further exploration is ongoing. Here I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Prof. Gerrit J. Poelarends for the supervision, encouragement, and suggestions which are always detailed and helpful. I am also happy to have so many nice colleagues who bright my life and help me with the experiments. Training events within our BiocatCodeExpander consortium are definitely exciting.

 

I have finished my first secondment with Dr. Ivana Drienovská, which was a nice experience to work with her and the lovely colleagues there. During the 4-month secondment, I got a better understanding of genetic code expansion. I learned how to incorporate various ncAAs into protein scaffolds and characterize enzymes with incorporated ncAAs. I also learned how to chemically synthesize secondary ncAAs, where I practiced setting up a chemical reaction and doing column chromatography for product purification. I believe the skills I obtained in Dr. Ivana Drienovská’s group are beneficial to my whole research. In our consortium, two workshops, Synthetic Biology School at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Biocatalysis & Enzyme Engineering School at Graz University of Technology, have been hosted, where we presented and discussed the research progress with PIs and DC colleagues, as well as worked at labs for new experimental skills. The semiannual workshops are quite attractive and informative. I have already looked forward to our next workshop in Berlin!

Best,

Liu