A BCHC PhD student, Gilda Padalino, recently returned from a trip to Oxford where she was working in collaboration with Professor Ray Owens at the Oxford Protein Production Facility (OPPF). Their aim was to express some of the enzymes involved in histone methylation in Schistosoma mansoni the parasite responsible for the human disease Schistosomiasis. Large scale expression and purification of these enzymes will hopefully facilitate crystallography studies which will further our understanding of the 3-dimensional structures of these proteins and inform the design of new drugs to specifically target them as a potential treatment for Schistosomiasis.
