Principal Investigator Sebastian Lourido
We are interested in how calcium signals are decoded by protein kinases, and in particular the role of calcium-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs) as the primary calcium-responsive kinases in parasites. Our work, and that of many others, has defined diverse roles for these kinases in regulating important events during the life cycle of apicomplexans. We have recently used alpaca-derived single-domain antibodies to probe the structure of CDPKs, defining a new mode of allosteric inhibition. We continue to develop biochemical methods to study these kinases, in addition to chemical-genetic approaches to study their function in vivo.