Elena Karnišová Potocká
Elena Karnišová Potocká is a postdoctoral researcher working previously at the Department of Glycochemistry (Institute of Chemistry, Slovak Academy of Sciences) with more than 10 years of experiences in the field of enzymatic catalysis with glycoside hydrolases including diglycosidases and production of glycoside derivatives of bioactive glycophenolics. She finished her PhD at the Slovak University of Technology in Bratislava (Slovakia) in 2017 and since then was working on optimisation of enzymatic glycosylations, isolation of products and characterisation of marginal glycoside hydrolases under the various national projects and participated in several COST actions to promote networking and results of her research. She has already published 13 papers.
In February this year she received a highly competitive MSCA postdoctoral fellowship for her multidisciplinary project under the supervision of Rita Ventura (Bioorganic Chemistry) and Lígia O. Martins (Microbial & Enzyme Technology), with the collaboration of Maria Miragaia (Bacterial Evolution and Molecular Epidemiology).
About the COxEnzymes – AGs project
Carbohydrate-oxidizing enzymes are natural tools to achieve oxidation of various substrates at specific positions. In the case of carbohydrates, which comprise multiple hydroxyl groups with very similar reactivity, regioselective reactions are even more important. Regioselectivity and substrate specificity relies on the architecture of enzyme active site, therefore the direct evolution approach in this project will allow to generate a toolbox of effective and regioselective catalysts to modify various carbohydrate scaffolds. Using of enzymes will allow to use mild conditions to achieve stereoselective oxidation very effectively. Biocatalysis will be applied to the synthesis of a wide range of saccharide related compounds, contributing to solve one of the big challenges in carbohydrate chemistry, the regioselective differentiation of the OH groups, in a green, sustainable and very efficient way.
The aim of this project is to use this toolbox of pyranose and galactose oxidases to generate a library of bioactive compounds as promising candidates with health benefits and/or antimicrobial activity. Enzymatic oxidation with specific oxidases in combination with stereospecific chemical reactions will lead to a large library of derivatives prepared in short time with an only two-step chemoenzymatic process.
