Osmoregulation Laboratory

In the Osmoregulation Laboratory of the FES Iztacala we studied the glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase of Pseudomonas aeruginosa (G6PDHPa), an enzyme that produces NADPH that this microorganism requires to face oxidative stress when it invades humans. In the search for substances that would help control the infections caused by the pathogen, the role that this enzyme plays has led us to consider it a potential target. In addition to exploring possible inhibitors of its activity, we also investigate substances and conditions that could affect its structural stability.

Other points of G6PDHPa that we address have to do with the elucidation of its three-dimensional structure and the knowledge of amino acid residues that could be important for its structure and its function.
In another investigation parallel to the G6PDHPa study, we recently cloned the P. aeruginosa hexR gene, and overexpressed and purified the recombinant HexRPa protein from E. coli. It has been proposed, for other bacterial species, that this protein transcriptionally regulates the expression of zwf, which codes for G6PDHPa, and that of other genes found in the same operon and that code for enzymes that participate in the same metabolic cycle as G6PDHPa , called EDEMP. We will shortly begin the structural and functional characterization of HexRPa to find out if it plays the same role in P. aeruginosa as in other species.

Velasco-García, R. and Vargas-Martínez, R. (2012). The study of protein–protein interactions in bacteria. Can. J. Microbiol., 58, 1241–1257. https://doi.org/10.1139/w2012-104

Kevin E. Acero-Navarro, K. E., Jiménez-Ramírez, M., Villalobos, M. A., Vargas-Martínez, R., Perales-Vela, H. V. and Velasco-García, R. (2018). Cloning, overexpression, and purification of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Protein Expression and Purification, 142, 53-61.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pep.2017.10.004

Garrido, F., Pacheco, M., Vargas-Martínez, R., Velasco-García, R., Jorge, I., Serrano, H., Portillo, F., Vázquez, J. and Pajares M. A. (2018). Identification of hepatic protein-protein interaction targets for betaine homocysteine S-methyltransferase. Plos One, 13(6), e0199472.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0199472

Benítez-Rangel, E., Rodríguez-Hernández, A. and Velasco-García, R. (2020). The substrate of the glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase of Pseudomonas aeruginosa provides structural stability. BBA-Proteins and Proteomics 1868, 140331.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bbapap.2019.140331