Group Leader

My early interest in evolution, genetics, and Public Health led me to do a PhD on the genetic basis of fluoroquinolone resistance in the zoonotic agent Streptococcus suis. During this time, I became fascinated by integrons, a major entity in the field of AR, for they confer multidrug resistance and are easily maintained in clinically-relevant populations through co-selection. But the aspect that I found more interesting was the physiology of the integron: the subtleties of the mechanisms that allowed it to provide bacteria with a memory of adaptive functions. Through a Marie Curie IEF grant, I performed my postdoctoral in the leading laboratory in the field, the group of Didier Mazel. 

At the end of this period I sought to complement my training by learning the bases of experimental evolution and its application to the evolution of antimicrobial resistance. I performed a short post-doc in one of the leading groups in the field, that of Craig MacLean in the University of Oxford. There, I worked on a project aiming to predict the behavior of integrons under antibiotic treatment.

Through a novel competitive grant from the Comunidad de Madrid, I have recently established the Molecular Basis of Adaptation unit, where I am eager to push further our knowledge on bacterial evolvability through the study of chromosomal integrons.