Dina Al Nahhas
Email: nahhas@portocontericerche.it
Affiliation:
Porto Conte Ricerche S.r.l
Tramariglio, Alghero SS
Sardinia, Italy
Education and experience:
My motivation for my studies stems from the day I won a championship prize in the Olympics of chemistry when I was in high school. Linking my motive to the curiosity I carry about the human body, pushed me to study BSc in pharmacy at the International University of Science and Technology in Damascus, Syria. I was able to graduate with a 2:1 classification and
received a merit-based scholarship during my five years of study.
I carried the work on my bachelor thesis in the Atomic Energy commission Organization about the effect of scorpion
venom on cancer cells. I have gained experience in cell culture, protein identification, apoptosis detection, and results analysis. Afterwards, I thought about expanding my background in analytical chemistry since the analytical tools are a gateway for discoveries and quality control. For that, I followed an international master's program in analytical chemistry for drugs and natural products at the University of Bordeaux, France, which I passed as one of the top three students.
During my masters, I was able to use different analytical tools and software which made me curious to use those tools in research to identify new compounds of important needs. My master's internship in research raised more zealousness when I worked on my thesis about Phytochemical analysis using GC-MS and LC-MS-MS and bioactivity evaluation of Retama monosperma plant in Instituto Polytechnico de Braganca, Portugal. I worked on extracting secondary metabolites from the plant, identification, and quantification using LCMS/MS and GCMS besides different software for data interpretation.
For this reason, I wanted to link my bachelor's motivation to the questions raised in my mind during my master's to do a Ph.D. in bioanalytical chemistry to lead new discoveries in Proteomics and tackle antimicrobial resistance to better peoples health in the future and unravel new targets for future antibiotics.
ESR4:In Vivo proteome of S. aureus during skin infection
Project description:
This project aims to use a proteomic approach to determine metabolic changes in S. aureus during skin infection compared to growth in broth. Following infection, abscessed tissue will be snap-frozen, and the in vivo proteomes will be determined quantitatively, using a highly developed platform. Proteins that are highly up-regulated at the infection site compared to growth in the broth will be assumed to be important for infections, and selected genes encoding these enzymes will be subjected to further testing. The project focuses on redundancy in the metabolism of S. aureus. The genes predicted to form essential redundant pairs of enzymes will be knocked out (single and double mutants) by site-specific mutation, and the importance for infection will be determined.
This project will be carried out within three years on three different tasks as the following:
- Year one: Infect mice in a skin infection model and determine quantitatively the proteome of the infecting bacteria and compare it to the one in broth in different conditions.
- Year two: Perform metabolic modelling with incorporation of the proteome data and construct site specific mutants in 5 selected redundant pairs of metabolic enzymes (single and double mutants).
- Year three: Characterize mutants for growth and expression during infection.