Dr. Saacnicteh Toledo-Patino

Principal Investigator |  Molecular Bioengineering and Evolution
Exploring the mysteries of proteins | Passionate about science communication and art

Welcome to my digital space. I am Saacnicteh, a Biochemist exploring the way proteins evolved. My scientific journey started in Germany, at the Max Planck Institute for Biology, where I obtained my Ph.D. in protein engineering. During my doctoral studies, I investigated how nature uses a mix-and-match mechanism similar to Lego bricks to create new proteins from existing building blocks. I found that small changes such as insertions and deletions  (InDels) can dramatically modify their architecture and function.

I moved to Japan in late 2019 to conduct my postdoctoral studies at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST). Here, I dedicated part of my research to understanding the most catalytically diverse enzyme, the Rossmann fold. By studying this multitasking nanomachine, I gathered meaningful information on how nature recycles existing building blocks of proteins to build new ones that catalyze fundamentally distinct chemistries, such as methylation and redox, also through simple additions or extractions of only a few amino acids. These discoveries led me to question whether InDels could also be involved in switching the topologies (shapes) of proteins, leading to the birth of new catalysis. To explore this, I focused on the most ancient protein topology (P-loop) and the Rossmann enzymes, uncovering that even a single mutation (insertion) can lead to a switch in topology between these ancient enzymes.