RESEARCH

In the group we investigate through computational modeling many biochemical processes mainly related to enzyme catalysis.

Check out this excellent movie made by Visual13 for the FPdGi award:

Enzymes are the most efficient, specific and selective catalysts known up to date. Despite the enzyme advantages, not all synthetic processes present a natural enzyme to catalyze and accelerate the reactions. Hence, the design of new stable enzymes for those processes where no biocatalyst is known represents a major challenge for protein engineering and a stringent test to understand how natural enzymes work. In addition to that, the ability of designing specific active enzymes is of great interest due to the potential applications in biotechnology, biomedicine and industrial processes.

We aim to design new enzymes for distinct processes important for their potential applications in medicine. 

My group is funded by the European Research Council (ERC) -Consolidator Grant project FASTEN (ERC-2022-CoG-101088032, PI: Osuna), Proof of Concept project GREENZYME (ERC-2022-PoC2-101112805, PI: Osuna), MINECO project COCOZYME (PID2021-129034NB-100, PI: Osuna) and Prueba de Concepto project EVOCAT (PDC2022-133950-100, PI: Osuna). We have obtained a Human Frontier Science Program – Program Grants together with Prof. Tokuriki (coordinator, Univ British Columbia, CAN), Prof. Fraser (Univ Calif SF, US), and Prof. Noji (Tokyo Univ, JP). Altogether, I manage a total of ca. 2.6 M€ from European and National funding agencies for developing my research.

We also work on the computational exploration of the chemical reactivity and properties of carbon-based materials. This topic is related to Sílvia’s PhD thesis and she has collaborations with the groups of Prof. L. Echegoyen (UTEP), Dr. Y. Yamakoshi (ETH Zurich), Prof. J. M. Poblet (URV), and Prof. N. Martín (UCM).