My first results

During the last few weeks, I have been producing three of the proteins I'm studying during this project. They all have an iron-sulfur cluster and are therefore yellow/brownish at high concentration (see picture). One aim of my project is to analyse wheter this iron-sulfur cluster contributes with electrons in order for the protein to repair damaged DNA. One technique you can use to analyse this is Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR), and yesterday I performed the first analysis of my proteins by EPR. I don't know much about this technique yet, but I'm here to learn more about it as part of my project. From the very preliminar results we got yesterday I'm convinced we will gain new knowlegde about this class of enzymes which in the end will teach us more about their contribution for the maintenance of our genome :-) The experiment was performed in collaboration with Professor Miguel Teixeira at the Metalloproteins and Bioenergetics Unit at the ITQB.

By the way, this week the heat finally arrived, and I think it was about 28C yesterday. Unfortunately I haven't been able to enjoy it as much yet since I'm working, but during the weekend I will go the beach :-)

Have a nice weekend!