Hudson Lab
Rochester Institute of Technology

Links of Interest

• College of Science @ RIT
• School of Life Sciences @ RIT
• Google Scholar
• American Society of Plant Biologists
• American Society for Microbiology
• PubMed
• IMG
• TAIR
• SiGnAL Salk
• Coli Genomic Stock Center
• ExPASy Proteomics Server

Courses Taught

• Cell Biology
• Fundamentals of Plant Biochemistry
• Bio-separations: Principles and Practices
• Fundamentals of Plant Pathology

Contact Information

Andre O. Hudson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Department of Biological Sciences
Rochester Institute of Technology
85 Lomb Memorial Drive
Rochester, NY 14623
Phone: 585-475-4259
Fax:585-475-5766
aohsbi@rit.edu

Current Research in the Hudson Lab

My laboratory is primarily interested in amino acid metabolism. More specifically, we are interested in the aminotransferases class of enzymes. Aminotranferases (EC 2.6.1.x) are ubiquitous enzymes that are involved in amino acid biosynthesis, vitamin metabolism, carbon and nitrogen assimilation, secondary metabolism etc. They catalyze reversible reactions by transferring an amine group from a donor to an acceptor. The amino donor is usually an amino acid and the amino acceptor is usually a 2oxo-acid. In the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana, there are 44 annotated aminotransferases. Using biochemical and bio-informatical approaches, my lab is interested in elucidating the function of the remaining aminotransferase enzymes that are deemed putative. Our group recently characterized a tyrosine aminotransferase from Arabidopsis and has solved the 3 dimensional structure of a diaminopimelate aminotransferase (DapL) from Chlamydomonas reinhardtii along with Dr. Renwick Dobson from the University of Melbourne/University of Canterbury.

Recently, our lab initiated a project to study the kinetic, physical and structural properties of putative cellulase enzymes from a variety of organisms.

Current Lab Members

Dhivya Patteniyil	Project: Characterization of LysA from Arabidopsis thaliana.
Francisco Savka	Project: Characterization of a putative Β-alanine aminotransferase from Arabidopsis thaliana
Kayla Bell	Project: Characterization of a lysine decarboxylase from Arabidopsis thaliana
Muhammad Fauzi	Project: Characterization of tyrosine aminotransferase overexpression in plants
Sean McGroty	Project: Characterization of a putative branched-chain aminotransferase from Arabidopsis thaliana
Victoria Nachar	Project: Genomic analysis of lysine biosynthesis in V. spinosum
Mohd Fuad Ismail	Project: Identification and characterization of a putative cellulase from Bradyrhizobium japonicum

Graduated Lab Members

Pranav Prabhu	Project: The cloning and characterization of a putative tyrosine aminotransferase from Arabidopsis thaliana.
Jeet Hirpara	Project: The characterization of L,L-diaminopimelate aminotransferase over-expression in Arabidopsis thaliana
Robert Van Buren	Project:The characterization of tyrosine aminotransferase over-expression in Arabidopsis thaliana
Nur Akmar Yusoff	Project: The elucidation of genes involved in bacterial sensing
Hanis Nazihah Hasmad	Project:The elucidation of genes involved in bacterial sensing