Jana Filitcheva

Citation

Thesis Title
PNGases: A diverse family of enzymes related by function rather than catalytic mechanism

Read article at Massey Research Online:

Mrs Filitcheva’s research focussed on the characterisation of Peptide:N-glycanases (PNGases), enzymes that cleave asparagine-linked sugars from peptides and proteins. One part of her research concentrated on the identification and characterisation of new putative PNGases. The second part of this work involved the characterisation of the catalytic reaction mechanism of PNGase F, a valuable enzyme for researchers studying different aspect of glycoproteins. Following site-specific mutagenesis to mutate several active-site residues, enzyme-kinetic studies of these mutants identified the residues most likely involved in catalysis and allowed the proposal of a reaction mechanism for PNGase°F.

Supervisors
Associate Professor Gill Norris
Dr Mark Patchett