Alejandro Vila

Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Rosario - AR

Alejandro Vila is Full Professor of Biophysics at the University of Rosario (UNR) and Senior Researcher of the Argentinean National Council of Scientific and Technological Research (CONICET). He is Group Leader at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biology (IBR) of Rosario.

Vila's main interest is to unravel the role of metal ions in biology, mainly using NMR. His lab elucidated the determinants of substrate recognition and catalytic mechanism of metallo-Β-lactamases, not only in vitro, but also identifying the active species of these enzymes in the bacterial periplasm. These contributions allowed demonstrating that this family of enzymes has a common reaction mechanism, despite a large structural diversity. Based on this, he has designed mechanistic-inspired inhibitors with a potent bactericidal action.

His group has used metallo-Β-lactamases as a model system to study protein evolution, having identified the biochemical and biophysical aspects that allow these enzymes to improve their activity and stability in the bacterial cell. This approach allowed him to develop a strategy that fills the gap between molecular studies of purified proteins and the resistance phenotype when lactamases are expressed in bacteria.