Richard Hopkinson
Principal Investigator
Dr Richard Hopkinson is Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Leicester. His research focus is on understanding how reactions between biomolecules and reactive small molecules, such as formaldehyde, affect biological systems in health and disease.
Project in second call:
Defining how reactive metabolites regulate the protein cysteinome
Principal Investigator
Dr Richard Hopkinson is Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Leicester. His research focus is on understanding how reactions between biomolecules and reactive small molecules, such as formaldehyde, affect biological systems in health and disease.
Project in second call:
Defining how reactive metabolites regulate the protein cysteinome
Principal Investigator
Dr Richard Hopkinson is Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Leicester. His research focus is on understanding how reactions between biomolecules and reactive small molecules, such as formaldehyde, affect biological systems in health and disease.
Project in second call:
Defining how reactive metabolites regulate the protein cysteinome
Short Biography
Dr Richard Hopkinson started his position as lecturer in chemical biology at the University of Leicester in November 2017, where he is currently leading a research group. The group’s research focuses on understanding how reactive small molecules affect cellular functions in health and disease. They are particularly interested in defining the biochemistry and biology of formaldehyde.
Dr Hopkinson earned his doctorate degree in Chemistry at the University of Oxford, where he focused on the biochemistry of histone methyllysine demethylase enzymes in Chris Schofield’s group. Following his Ph.D., he continued with a postdoctoral position at the same university (Oxford Chemistry and the Structural Genomics Consortium), concentrating on demethylase inhibition, before joining the University of Leicester.
In 2013, he was awarded the William R Miller Junior Research Fellowship in Molecular Aspects of Biology at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to work on formaldehyde biochemistry and biology.
AMBER postdoctoral fellowship subject (second call)
Defining how reactive metabolites regulate the protein cysteinome
The biology of reactive metabolites (RMs) such as aldehydes and reactive oxygen and sulfur species is undetermined at the molecular level. This is largely because RMs are difficult to work with (reactive, small, unstable, volatile) and can exhibit different effects at different concentrations. To fully define the biology of RMs, a holistic multidisciplinary approach is required that combines chemical biology tools with cellular methods.
Cysteine is redox-sensitive and is the most nucleophilic amino acid under physiological conditions. It is therefore the most likely amino acid on proteins to undergo reactions with RMs. There are a growing number of reported RM-cysteine reactions on proteins, with many reported to induce functional changes. Many cysteine modifications are also reported to occur in disease and ageing. Understanding how RMs react with and affect the functions of cysteine-containing proteins is therefore of interest to basic science and biomedically focused research.
In this work, we will use bespoke RM-modulating chemical tools and imaging/detection methods to identify, characterise and phenotypically analyse RM reactions on cellular protein cysteines. Development of tool compounds will build on our previous expertise with aldehydes, reactive sulfur species and peroxynitrite, while the cellular work will use newly developed CRISPR methodology (recently published for lysines: DOI = 10.1016/j.molcel.2023.10.033) to screen for functionally relevant modifications. We will also monitor cysteine modifications (and selenocysteine modifications) in mouse models of ageing and oxidative stress. Ultimately the work will provide the first comprehensive overview of RM-mediated regulation of cysteines that should lead to new treatments against human disease.
Project leadership team: Richard Hopkinson (University of Leicester), Steven Bull (University of Leicester), Chris Switzer (University of Leicester)
Location: Leicester, UK
Organisation: University of Leicester, School of Chemistry
Links
AMBER call in EURAXESS main call (starting point for application)
Richard Hopkinson's Profile on the University of Leicester website
The Hopkinson Group at the University of Leicester