Arsenio Pacheco

Professor Arsenio Pacheco is a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM), affiliated with the College of Letters & Science. His research focuses on biological inorganic chemistry, particularly enzyme mechanisms involved in the nitrogen cycle and microbial biochemistry. He leads the Pacheco Group, collaborating with Prof. Marius Schmidt from UWM's Physics Department on projects involving time-resolved crystallography.

Education: PhD in Chemistry from the University of British Columbia. His work addresses environmental challenges related to nitrogen cycle imbalances and explores proteins like truncated hemoglobin N (trHbN) in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which neutralizes nitric oxide to evade immune responses.

Research projects include studying cytochrome c nitrite reductase (ccNiR) and hydroxylamine oxidoreductase (HAO) to understand ammonia-nitrite interconversion mechanisms, with implications for sustainable agriculture. His studies on trHbN involve protein structure-function relationships, ligand diffusion pathways, and conformational dynamics affecting enzyme activity.

Publications span enzymology, structural biology, and biochemical mechanisms, with a focus on multi-heme proteins and their roles in microbial respiration. Ongoing research explores conformational changes in trHbN's pre-A region and their impact on oxygen binding kinetics.