[Project supported by FrenchBIC] Études mécanistiques de complexes à cuivre bioinspirés par la LPMO

Rébecca Leblay, from the group BiosCiences, iSm2, Marseille spent two weeks in the LCC in Toulouse. This project was supported by FrenchBIC.

My PhD aims at studying the activity of LPMO (Lytic Polysaccharide MonoOxygenases) bioinspired synthetic complexes and their potential activity to valorize recalcitrant biomass. Besides, in Toulouse, peptide ligands with a structure inspired of the first coordination sphere of the LPMO active site have been synthetized. To compare the nature and mechanism of oxidation by synthetic/peptide complexes, enzymes and free copper salt, the study of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) production is a key step.
Methodologies to do so have been set up at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination (LCC, CNRS) in the Alzheimer, amyloids and Bio-Inorganic Chemistry Group. In this context, a collaboration with Dr. Christelle Hureau, thanks to a grant from FrenchBIC, allowed us to compare the peptide and synthetic models with respect to their ability to produce ROS.
During the two weeks spent in Toulouse, we identified some trends for the ROS production and optimized the operating conditions to be appropriate for our systems; we further extended our exchange with the settling of a LPMO-like activity test. This collaboration gave us promising results for further experiments. I am thankful to FrenchBIC for the grant and to Dr. Christelle Hureau and her team, a very welcoming team, in which I learnt a lot!
Rébecca Leblay

• LPMO-like activity of bioinspired copper complexes: from model substrate to extended polysaccharides,  ChemCatChem (2023)  doi: 10.1002/cctc.202300933