Cloning & Transgenesis
Open Access

Luigi Mandrich

Biography

Dr. Luigi Mandrich is currently researcher at the Institute of Protein Biochemistry of Italian National Research Council. He has graduated in Biological Sciences in 1997 at the University of Naples “Federico II”, and in 2004 he has received PhD in Industrial Biotechnology at the University of Naples “Federico II”. During his training he muoved in The Netherland and Argentina to exploiting new approach to use exogenous enzyme in cheese making. He has carried out research in the field of biochemistry, acquiring advanced skills in enzymology, molecular biology, biotechnological applications and proteomic; actually he is involved in projects that regard recombinant technology to produce and study human and bacterial proteins (paraoxonases) involved in detoxification by pesticides. He is author of more than 40 papers on international peer reviewed journals.

Research Interest

Main research line is the study of the structure-function relationship in enzymes from the viewpoint of understanding the determinants that underlay (thermal)stability and the molecular processes which control the substrate recognition, enzyme inhibition and enzyme catalysis. The tasks are approached mainly by studying enzymes from (hyper)thermophilic sources, mainly from Archaea and are also performed by comparison with mesophilic, homologous counterparts, which allow tracing back evolution of enzyme activity by looking at sequence/structure hallmarks and promiscuous activities. Furthermore, the potential uses of these enzymes in the industry, for the environment and for human health are investigated.