Alan Berry
Professor
School of Molecular and Cellular Biology
University of Leeds
United Kingdom
Biography
Postdoctoral work at ETH-Zurich and the University of Cambridge. Appointed lecturer 1994; Senior Lecturer 1997.
Research Interest
Protein engineering is a powerful tool for the study of the relationship between structure and function of enzymes and has important applications in the design of new enzymes. Both rational redesign and directed evolutionary approaches are being used in my laboratory to alter the specificity and chemistry of selected enzymes. The fructose bisphosphate aldolases are important targets for engineering as new catalysts for stereospecific carbon-carbon bond formation. The roles of selected amino acids in the reaction mechanism of the enzyme have been elucidated in my laboratory and crystallography of the enzyme (with Dr Hunter, Dundee) is now enabling us to rationally redesign the enzyme for new substrate specificity. We are also using directed evolution to evolve novel enzymes for use in biocatalysis. These enzymes are being created by DNA shuffling or STEPing and are then subjected to rigourous analysis by a wide range of enzymological techniques such as kinetics, ESI-MS, CD, FTIR, NMR and X-ray crystallography.
Publications
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Windle CL, Simmons KJ, Ault JR, Trinh CH, Nelson A, et al., (2017). Extending enzyme molecular recognition with an expanded amino acid alphabet Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 114 2610-2615.
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Windle CL, Berry A, Nelson A, (2017). Aldolase-catalysed stereoselective synthesis of fluorinated small molecules Current Opinion in Chemical Biology 37: 33-38.
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Cross LL, Paudyal R, Kamisugi Y, Berry A, Cuming AC, et al., (2017). Towards designer organelles by subverting the peroxisomal import pathway Nature Communications 8.
