基本信息
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Career Trajectory
Bio
I am interested in molecular mechanisms underlying the reciprocal influence of bacterial evolution, gene expression and interspecies interactions. I did my PhD between the Department of Genetics (University of Seville, Spain) and the Centre de Génétique Moléculaire (CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France), co-supervised by Professors Josep Casadesús and Lionello Bossi, and visited Jay Hinton's lab (Institute of Food Research, Norwich, UK). I studied regulation of gene expression in Salmonella enterica, and revealed the epigenetic regulation of its virulence (Balbontín et al. J Bact. 2006), developed the first genetic approach to identify mRNA targets of sRNA-mediated regulation (Figueroa-Bossi et al. Mol Microbiol. 2006), showed that sRNA genes are hot spots for integration of horizontally acquired DNA (Balbontín et al. J Bact. 2008), unveiled a heptameric "seed" sequence in a sRNA required for the regulation of multiple mRNA targets, and showed the first example of a sRNA with two mRNA pairing sites (Balbontín et al. Mol Microbiol. 2010).
As a postdoctoral researcher in the Bossi lab (CGM, Gif-sur-Yvette, France), I continued studying Salmonella sRNAs, and described a novel mechanism of synergistic positive regulation mediated by two sRNAs that involves promotion of ribosomal entry at an upstream "standby" site (Balbontín et al. Mol Microbiol. 2016).
As a Fulbright postdoctoral researcher in Professor Roberto Kolter's lab at Harvard Medical School (Boston, USA), I focused on inter-species interactions, dissecting a novel tri-partite inter-kingdom interaction involving S. enterica, a fungal pathogen (Aspergillus niger) and Zea mays as plant host (Balbontín et al. Microb Biotechnol. 2014).
As a FCT and Marie-Sklodowska Curie postdoctoral researcher in Isabel Gordo's lab (Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal), I continued studying interactions, in the context of intra-species cooperation and cheating in the oportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Özkaya et al. J Bacteriol. 2017), and showed that cheating among cheaters for different traits stabilizes cooperation (Özkaya et al. Curr Biol. 2018). However, my main focus was bacterial evolution within the framework of antibiotic resistance, and showed that compensatory evolution targets the epistasis between antibiotic resistance mutations in Escherichia coli (Moura de Sousa & Balbontín et al. PLOS Biology. 2017) and that DNA breaks contribute to the fitness cost of resistance, also revealing RNase HI as a novel target for antimicrobial therapies specific against resistant bacteria (Balbontín et al. Mol Biol Evol. 2021).
As a María Zambrano Fellow at the University of Seville (Spain), major questions that I find exciting (and critical for global health) are how antibiotics and antibiotic resistance affect bacterial physiology and evolution. Because of the key role of R-loops (RNA-DNA hybrids formed during transcription) in molecular mechanisms essential for bacterial fitness (specially of antibiotic resistant bacteria), DNA integrity and bacterial evolution, my current research involves studying R-loop imbalance (excess or defect of R-loops) as a strategy to identify novel targets for anti-virulence and anti-resistance treatments.
Teaching experience:
- Advanced Bacterial Genetics. Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. Teaching Assistant. 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. 640h (160h/year).
- Biology at the Host Microbe Interface PhD program . 2019. Lecturer. 2h.
- IGC PhD program. Evolutionary Biology Course. 2015/2016. Lecturer. 1h.
- Experimental Techniques in Genetics. University of Seville. Courses 2008/2009 and 2009/2010. Teaching Assistant. 30h.
- Course in Genetics. Academia CEUS. Course 2003/2004. Lecturer. 32h.
Scientific mentees:
- Luís Cardoso (PhD student, IGC).
- Özhan Özkaya (PhD student, IGC).
- Carolina Barata (Master student, IGC.
- Carlos Pardo Millán (undergraduate student, HMS).
- Prof. Nelly Henry (Professor in sabbatical, HMS).
- Yang Qi (PhD student, CGM).
- Martina Valentini (Master student, CGM).
Peer-reviewing experience:
- Scientific manuscripts: mBio (American Society for Microbiology, ASM), Environmental Microbiology (Society for Applied Microbiology and John Wiley & Sons Ltd), The ISME Journal (Springer Nature), Evolution, Medicine and Public Health (Oxford University Press), Scientific Reports (Springer Nature), mSystems (ASM), Microbial Biotechnology (John Wiley & Sons Ltd and Society for Applied Microbiology), Frontiers in Microbiology (Frontiers Media) and Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE).
- Grant applications: The Leverhulme Trust (UK), the Auckland Medical Research Foundation (New Zealand), Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France).
Professional membership:
- American Society for Microbiology (ASM).
- Sociedad Española de Microbiología (SEM).
- Sociedad Española de Biología Molecular y Bioquímica (SEBBM).
- Sociedad Española de Genética (SEG)
- Sociedad Española de Biología Evolutiva (SESBE)
Research Interests
Papers共 31 篇Author StatisticsCo-AuthorSimilar Experts
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Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 5 (2024): 108197-108197
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 5 (2024): 108327-108327
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 5 (2024): 108196-108196
Cold Spring Harbor protocols (2023)
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 9 (2023): pdb.prot107950-pdb.prot107950
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 9 (2023): pdb.prot107951-pdb.prot107951
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 9 (2023): pdb.corr108466-pdb.corr108466
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 9 (2023): 628-637
Cold Spring Harbor protocolsno. 9 (2023): pdb.top107855-pdb.top107855
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