Marcelo Lima

Biography

Hearted Biologist and enthusiastic with Chemical and Structural Biology. BSc Biology, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte 2008, Masters (2010), PhD (2012) and post-doc (2014) in Molecular Biology, Federal University of São Paulo. Throughout my career, I've been engaged with a wide range of disciplines ranging from mathematics coupled with spectroscopy to protein cloning and expression attempting to understand the relationship between the structure and function of relevant biological macromolecules, especially complex carbohydrates. Notably, using such approach, my research led to a change in how the major anticoagulant drug – heparin – is quality controlled and how it functions in terms antithrombin activation. Furthermore, using glycostructural analysis coupled to cell and molecular biology techniques, my research shed light in how complex carbohydrates are biosynthesised. The latter work has challenged the commonly accepted theory where glycosaminoglycans chains are biosynthesised by their modifying enzymes in a hierarchical model. Also, besides teaching undergraduate/graduate courses, apart from my usual research, I've been looking into new ways of studying fine cellular structures and processes using super-resolution and CARS (Coherent Anti-Stokes Raman Scattering) microscopy by selective labelling and detection.