Dr Mateo Sanchez Lopez
Wellcome Trust Fellow
Department of Chemistry
Biography
I received my PhD in organic chemistry in 2014 from the University of Santiago de Compostela. While the focus of my thesis was on the design and synthesis of fluorescent DNA binders and I also envisioned a pioneering strategy that consists of using an organometallic catalyst in living cells to trigger a biological event, such as DNA binding.
As I was eager to learn molecular biology and directed evolution, in 2015 I joined the group of Prof. Alice Ting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and later in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University. My work was focused on the development of new molecular tools for cell biology and neuroscience. In 2020 I decided to join the Synthetic Biology Centre in the department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, to work with Prof. Tom Ellis to gain further expertise in the development of molecular biology using engineering principles. with Marie-Curie Sklodowska-Action.
I got awarded with a Wellcome Trust Career Development Award and I leading my group in the Department of Chemistry at Cambridge.
Research
I lead a chemical biology lab, located at the University of Cambridge, that aims to apply the principles of chemistry in order to unlock our understanding of cell biology and using biology to create new chemistry.
Leveraging a unique combination of synthetic chemistry, protein engineering, directed evolution, optogenetics, and synthetic biology, we aim to create proteins with novel catalytic activities and properties. Harnessing these new biophysical features, we plan to develop new molecular tools for cell biology and neuroscience, and engineer new organisms bearing artificial genomes and gene clusters.
