Professor Kostas Tokatlidis

Our lab studies the mechanisms of protein folding, targeting and assembly in cells as these underpin cell physiology, architecture and function. We are mainly interested chaperone-assisted protein folding and disulphide bond formation, and have discovered several proteins that control these processes. We use this fundamental knowledge to develop more efficient systems for recombinant production of high value proteins in bacterial, yeast and mammalian cells. To this end we address the two major problems in recombinant protein production (i.e solubility and proper disulphide bond formation) using targeted expression of dedicated oxidase and chaperone systems. Our tools include bacterial and yeast recombinant protein expression, fermentation, protein folding/biophysical characterisation and assembly assays, cellular subfractionation and organelle purification, yeast genetics, Cell metabolism  assays (SeaHorse Flux Analyser for respiration and glycolysis).