Head of Department: Fernando Rojo.

Research on microbial biotechnology is focused on microbes with environmental or clinical relevance, trying to link the generation of knowledge with the development of biotechnological applications. Work includes several approaches based on molecular genetics, systems and synthetic biology, genomics, proteomics and metagenomics. The Department is organized in twelve distinct research groups. The scientific objectives are focused on five complementary aspects of microbial biology:

• Environmental microbiology. We aim to understand how microorganisms degrade organic compounds that generate environmental problems, as well as why a microorganism that can efficiently degrade a compound of interest under laboratory conditions does usually not perform so well under natural conditions. This will allow optimizing bioremediation strategies directed to reduce the impact of contaminants in the environment.
• Microbial pathogens. Efforts are directed to understand how microbial pathogens infect or invade a eukaryotic host, with particular emphasis on the host-pathogen interactions occurring in infections caused by intracellular bacterial pathogens and phytopathogenic fungi. This will facilitate finding new strategies to fight infections, and new targets to combat microbial diseases relevant in human health and agriculture.
• Microbial resistance to antibiotics and search for new antimicrobials. Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a very serious problem that is increasingly reducing the effectiveness of current tools to combat infections. Work aims to understand the mechanisms of bacterial resistance to antibiotics and to analyze the complex responses elicited upon exposure of microbes to sub-lethal concentrations of antibiotics. In addition, we search new potential targets as a way to develop new antimicrobials.
• Microbial responses to hostile environments. The focus in this line is to understand bacterial responses to stressful environments, including the reaction to host defense responses and to agents causing DNA damage. We study how opportunistic pathogens adapt to survive within a host, eliciting defense responses against the immune system, and how bacteria and fungi replicate DNA and repair DNA damages to improve genome stability. The information gained helps finding new strategies to combat pathogens.
• Microbial engineering. The purpose is to generate bacterial strains optimized to obtain products of interest (recombinant antibodies, hydrolytic enzymes or antimicrobial compounds), or to detect and degrade pollutants.

RESERACH LINES:

• Genetic stability. Juan Carlos Alonso.
• Recombination-dependent DNA replication. Silvia Ayora.
• Stress and bacterial evolution. Jesús Blázquez.
• Cell cycle, DNA replication and genome stability in eukaryotes. Arturo Calzada.
• Protein secretion and antibody expression. Luis Ángel Fernández.
• Intracellular bacterial pathogens. Francisco García-del Portillo.
• Opportunistic pathogens. José Luis Martínez.
• Molecular mechanisms of fungal virulence. José Pérez Martín.
• Heterologous gene expression and secretion in Gram-positive bacteria of industrial application. Rafael Pérez Mellado.
• Regulation of the metabolism of hydrocarbons in bacteria. Fernando Rojo.
• Microbial community modelling. Javier Tamames de la Huerta.
• Genetic control of cell cycle. Miguel Vicente.