Pomes

Bear Lab shows that a new Cystic Fibrosis treatment improves function from a rare CFTR mutation in patient tissue

14 July 2017|

The laboratory of Christine Bear, together with the group of Régis Pomès and collaborators at The Hospital for Sick Children and Proteostasis Therapeutics, used in silico, in vitro and ex vivo techniques to comprehensively understand the consequences of a rare Cystic Fibrosis (CF) disease-causing mutation in the CFTR gene: c.3700 A>G (ΔI1234_R1239), and subsequently develop a novel mechanism-based therapeutic strategy.

Steven Molinski, first author of the study and recent […]

An artistic interpretation of the enzyme fluoroacetate dehalogenase binding substrate (green) in the left subunit and releasing bound water molecules (red) in the right-hand subunit.

The roles of protein dynamics and water networks in catalysis visualized

1 February 2017|

The dimeric enzyme fluoroacetate dehalogenase is one of only a handful of protein catalysts that can break the strongest bond in organic chemistry, the one between carbon and fluorine atoms, in the process transforming the highly toxic pesticide fluoroacetate into glycolate, a benign molecule.  The laboratories of Emil Pai and Scott Prosser, together with the group of Régis Pomès and collaborators in the US and Japan, have […]

Crystal structure of the outer membrane protein ZnuD

Charles Calmettes and other members of the Moraes, Pomès, and Gray-Owen labs publish paper in Nature Communications

25 August 2015|

The conserved outer-membrane zinc transporter ZnuD is utilized by bacteria to overcome nutritional restriction imposed by the host organism during infection.  In this Nature Communications paper (Calmettes et al.), Post doctoral fellow Dr. Charles Calmettes and other members of the Moraes Lab, Pomès Lab and Gray-Owen lab demonstrate that ZnuD is required for efficient systemic infections by the causative agent of bacterial meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis.  They combined X-ray crystallography […]