FCCT Biochemistry Lab
University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Faculty of Chemistry and Chemical Technology (FCCT)
FCCT Biochemistry Lab is formally organized as Biochemistry Chair (in the traditional European meaning of the word) and is involved in teaching biochemistry courses for students of chemistry, chemical engineering, biochemistry and laboratory biomedicine. We also teach enzymology, recombinant DNA technology and conduct in part several other theoretical and practical courses.
Our research was focused was for a long time on two main topics: proteinases & inhibitors and snake toxins & evolution, both mainly within the J. Stefan Institute Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. A novelty was a collaboration on humanization of monoclonal antibodies with the national Blood Transfusion Centre (2008-11), followed by two research grants, one on epithelial cell-adhesion molecule (2009-12) and one on APOBEC3 antiviral proteins (cooperation with J. Stefan Institute, 2009-12). A recent project is focused on nuclear transport mechanisms (2011-14, cooperation with the Biomedical Research and Innovative Society), while proteases continue to be studied by analyzing allosteric modifiers of cysteine cathepsins (2011-2013). Synthetic biology was an important issue since 2006. Recently we joined an international consortium for a EU FP7 project on cyanobacterial biofuels (2012-2015) where our topic is development of a new approach to biosafety of genetically modified cyanobacteria.
