Assoc. Prof. Dr. Ioannis Pavlidis is first supervisor of DCs number 4. He is co-supervisor of DC2 and DC12. And he is the leader of WP1 on „Enzyme discovery and characterization“.
Ioannis Pavlidis (1983) studied Biological Applications and Technologies at the University of Ioannina (Greece) and completed his doctoral studies on utilization of hydrolases in nanostructured systems under supervision of Prof. Charalampos Stamatis in 2011. He continued (2011-2015) as post-doctoral researcher at the Institute of Biochemistry, University of Greifswald (Germany), in the group of Biotechnology and Enzyme catalysisis of Prof. Uwe Bornscheuer. In 2015 he accepted a group leader position at the University of Kassel (Germany), establishing the group of Biotechnology. In January 2018 he became Assistant Professor for Biological Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry, University of Crete, where he was tenured in 2021 and in 2023 he was appointed as Associate Professor of Enzyme Technology -Biocatalysis at the same Department. He focuses on the identification and application of novel biocatalysts, spaning from CAZymes to enzymes for modification of bioactive compounds.
Key expertise
The Enzyme Technology Lab is working in a wide area of topics of biocatalysis, spanning from enzyme identification, protein engineering and process optimization. Our approaches combine bioinformatic analysis for the identification of novel enzymes from metagenomes, rational design and directed evolution approaches for the protein optimization, while for the application enzyme immobilization is considered, as well as biocatalysis in non-conventional media.
Research facilities include laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art equipment for research in fundamental and applied biocatalysis. This includes equipment for molecular biology in an S1-biosafety laboratory (PCR, cloning, mutagenesis), shakers and a fermenter for larger scale production, protein purification (2 FPLC systems), analytics (UV/Vis-Flu -plate reader and -spectrophotometer, GC-FID, HPLC-DAD), access to facilities for NMR, LC-MS, SEM, TEM, XRD, molecular modeling (YASARA, alphafold), enzyme reactors (SpinChem).
Hosting Institution
Established in 1973, the University of Crete (UoC) is a young public educational institution committed to excellence in research and teaching. Currently, over 18,000 undergraduate and 3,000 postgraduate students study in one of the 17 undergraduate programmes and 54 postgraduate programmes, through the Schools of Philosophy, Education, Social Sciences, Sciences & Technology, and Medicine. They are educated by an outward-looking academic faculty of around 450 members, as well as around 300 technical and administrative staff. UoC is ranked among the best Universities of Greece in several university rankings, especially in the research output. Reflecting its research activity and associated initiatives, the University of Crete is the first Greek University to have signed the EU Charter and the Code for the recruitment of researchers, and forms part of the Euraxess European network for the mobility of researchers. The University fully participates in quality assurance mechanisms both for its academic and administrative structures, and it is a strategic choice of the University that there will be an ongoing effort to meet quality in all its structures. UoC offers several training activities/courses to PhD students, from transferable skills (literature search, use of databases and search engines, efficient time administration, communicating science according to the audience, preparing CV, preparation for interview, pitching an idea for spin-off), as well as scientific skills (workshops on protein engineering and structural biology, training in advances methods such as NMR, LC-MS and XRD, among others).
Contact
ipavlidis@uoc.gr
University of Crete (UOC)
Department of Chemistry
Voutes University Campus
70013 Heraklion
Greece
https://www.chemistry.uoc.gr/pavlidis
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ipavlidis
https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=24473395000
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5811-368X
Relevant Publications
1.Q. Tang, C. Grathwol, A.S. Aslan-Üzel, S. Wu, A. Link., I.V. Pavlidis, C. Badenhorst, U.T. Bornscheuer, Directed evolution of a halide methyltransferase enables biocatalytic synthesis of diverse SAM analogues (2021) Angew. Chem. Int. Ed., 60(3), 1524-1527. DOI:10.1002/anie.202013871
E. Konia, K. Chatzicharalampous, A. Drakonaki C., Muenke, U. Ermler, G. Tsiotis, I.V. Pavlidis, Rational engineering of Luminiphilus syltensis (R)-selective amine transaminase for the acceptance of bulky substrates. (2021) Chem. Comm., 57, 12948-12951. DOI:10.1039/D1CC04664K
V. Tsopanakis, E. Anastasiadou, M.D. Mikkelsen, A.S. Meyer, I.V. Pavlidis, Identification and characterization of a novel thermostable PL7 alginate lyase from a submarine volcanic metagenomic library. (2024) Enz. Microb. Technol., 180, Art. No. 110486. DOI:10.1016/j.enzmictec.2024.110486