2002 - Instituto de Química - USP

Sergio Verjovski-AlmeidaSTRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONOF ATPASESSergio Verjovski-Almeida, Ph.D., M.D., is groupleader of the Laboratory of Structure and Functionof ATPases. His group works with calcium-ATPasefocusing on understanding at the molecular level themechanism of energy conversion involved in ion transportcatalyzed by this enzyme and with Schistosomamansoni ATP-diphosphohydrolase a membrane protein.His lab was a member of the Xylella Genomeproject, completed in March 2000, which has sequencedXylella fastidiosa, the first plant pathogento have its genome completely sequenced. Verjovski-Almeida coordinated one of the five sequencing centersfor the FAPESP/Ludwig Institute “Human CancerGenome Project”. This two-year project aimed atobtaining 1,000,000 EST sequences from humantumor cells, a goal that was reached on March 2001.His group is currently working on the multi-disciplinaryresearch project called “CAGE- Cooperation forAnalysis of Gene Expression”. Verjovski-Almeida coordinatesCAGE/Cancer, a cooperation between theInstitute of Chemistry, the Albert Einstein JewishHospital/SP and the Cancer Hospital, National CancerInstitute/RJ, devoted to explore the large collectionof acquired ESTs and to study differential geneexpression in prostate cancer. The figure shows a DNAmicroarray built and analyzed in our laboratory. Genesthat are over-expressed in prostate cancer appear red,those not changed in cancer when compared to normalprostate are yellow, and the genes that are downregulatedin cancer appear green. The aim of theproject is to characterize novel molecular markers fordiagnostic and prognostic purposes. Verjovski-Almeida coordinates the Schistosoma EST GenomeProject, a network of nine research laboratories inthe State of São Paulo funded by FAPESP to generate180,000 EST sequences from the parasite. Theaim is to characterize novel genes that could be newdrug targets or candidates for a vaccine. More aboutthis research may be found at http://verjo2.iq.usp.br/References:Frohme, M., Camargo, A., Czink, C., Matsukuma, A., Simpson, A.,Hoheisel, J. and Verjovski-Almeida, S. - Directed gap closure in large scalesequencing projects. Genome Res. 11: 901-903, 2001Camargo, A., Samaia, H., Dias-Neto, E., Simão, D., Migotto, I., Briones,M., Costa, F., Nagai, M., Verjovski-Almeida, S., Zago, M., et al. - Thecontribution of 700,000 “ORF sequence tags” to the definition of thehuman transcriptome. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 98: 12103-12108, 2001J. Fietto, R. DeMarco and S. Verjovski-Almeida - Use of degenerate primersand touchdown PCR for construction of cDNA Libraries. BioTechniques32:1404-1411, 2002J. Meidanis, M. Braga and S. Verjovski-Almeida - Whole Genome Analysisof Transporters in the plant pathogen Xylella fastidiosa. Microbiol.Molec. Biol. Rev. 66(2): 272-299, 2002.Instituto de Química - Pesquisa 2001 - 2002 94 Departamento Departamento de Química de FundamentalBioquímica