Loukas Petridis, PhD

Current research

Loukas is currently investigating at a molecular level aspects of biomass recalcitrance , the natural resistance of plant cell walls to enzymatic degradation. Biomass recalcitrance is the bottleneck in the production of sustainable biofuels. Biomass recalcitrance is attributed mainly to two factors, the crystalline nature of cellulose and the presence of lignin (mainly), hemicellulose and pectins that coat the cellulose fibrils.

As a first step, a CHARMM force field has been created for lignin (Petridis & Smith, 2008, J Comp Chem). Lignin topologies and 3D structures were generated and Molecular Dynamics simulations performed.  Results pf the simulations are compared with Small Angle Neutron Scattering experiments to verify the applicability of the initial models.

Biography

Loukas was born in Athens, Greece and read Natural Sciences in the University of Cambridge, UK and then continued to obtain his PhD under the supervision of Prof Eugene Terentjiev. His work involved the theoretical study of phase transitions in Nematic Elastomers. He then moved to join Prof Jeremy Smith's lab in Oak Ridge, where he is examining at a molecular level some aspects of biomass recalcitrance, the natural resistance of plant cell walls to enzymatic degradation.
 

Publications