Xavier Tadeo, CIC bioGUNE

Xavier Tadeo, researcher of the Structural Biology Unit of the CIC bioGUNE, has received the José Tormo Award to the best work in Structural Biology 2009-2010 by the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM) for the project Structural basis for the amino acid composition of proteins from halophilic archaea.

As stated by Tadeo, "some organisms live in extremely saline conditions, such as those in the Dead Sea. Archaea living in these ecosystems have adapted all the cell machinery to these harsh conditions. Protein haloadaptation is a clear example of these adaptive and evolutively converging changes. Basic features include an increase in aspartic and glutamic acids, negatively charged short-chain by-products, and a decrease in the ratio of lysine, showing a long hydrophobic chain".

According to Tadeo, the thermodynamic and structural studies of mutants causing the modification of the ratio of these by-products in two mesophile model proteins and in one halophile model enabled to prove that "by-products reducing the solvent accessible surface area promote protein stability in high saline conditions, since less water molecules are necessary to solvate the protein. That is the key for haloadaptation".

The award will be presented during the 33rd Edition of the SEBBM Congress to be held in Cordoba from 14 to 17 September where the researcher will give a lecture about the prizewinning work.