User:Mats Sandgren

This is the user page of Mats Sandgren, Ph.D.

I am a faculty scientist at the Department of Molecular Biology at the Swedish university of Agricultural Sciences in Uppsala, Sweden. Together with Associate Professor Jerry Stålberg I am leading a research group where we study structure and function of carbohydrate-active enzymes, with particular interest in plant biomass degrading enzymes used for various biofuel and biorefinery applications.

I am an author and responsible curator of the GH12 page of CAZypedia. If you wish to get in touch with me regarding any issue, involving my authorship of the GH12 page of CAZypedia, send me an e-mail to the following e-mail address: <email>mats.sandgren@molbio.slu.se</email>.

Short Curriculum vitae

I was borne in Stockholm, Sweden, and was during half of my childhood raised in Sweden and the other half in different countries in Africa. I obtained my MSc degree in biotechnology at the Swedish University of Agricultural (1994). This was followed by a Ph.D degree in molecular biology at Uppsala University (2003), in the group of Prof. Alwyn Jones. My PhD thesis work was focused on determining the three dimensional structure of various GH family12 enzymes by X-ray crystallography. After earning my PhD, I stayed an additional four years at Uppsala University, having a junior faculty position there. During these four years I started to build up a new research group, which I was coordinating the research work within and heading. The research focus of the group was, and still is, structure function studies of various glycoside hydrolases, with a particular focus on structure function studies of various plant-degrading enzymes from the soft rot fungus Hypocrea jecorina. During the summer of 2007 the whole research group moved from Uppsala University to the Department of Molecular Biology at The Swedish university of Agricultural Sciences, where I now have a faculty scientist position. At the new department the group joined forces with the research group of Jerry Ståhlberg. The main research focus of the joint research group is structure function studies of glycoside hydrolases, with a particular focus on proteins from GH families GH3, GH5, GH6, GH7, GH16 and GH61. Lately the group has also started carrying out different types of application testing studies using the various carbohydrate degrading enzymes studied within the group. These application studies are all carried out within the framework for a thematic research program called MicroDrivE (Microbial Derived Energy) at The Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, which currently I am the vice program director of.