October 2010 | Issue 12
03 05 06 07Partnering for health
IRB Barcelona retreat: city break style
The science and art of molecular dynamics
NEWSLETTER OF THE INSTITUTE FOR RESEARCH IN BIOMEDICINE
in vivo
New PhD students think outside the box
IRB Barcelona talks with four new PhD
students who joined the Institute in September
to find out about their first impressions and
research experiences
Page 02
New clues to disarming the deadliest herpes virus
IRB Barcelona scientists discover new clues to disarm the human cytomegalo-virus, the deadliest herpes virus and the cause of serious defects in newborns
Page 02
Faces to Names: Interview with Marco Milán
An opinion article about the im-
portance of intrinsically disordered
proteins in biomedicine and the need
for a change of paradigm
Page 04
Beyond static structures
A revolutionary technique
The Advanced Digital Microscopy
Core Facility introduces a revolu-
tionary technique into its portfolio
of services
Page 05
in vivo October 2010 | Issue 1202
IN FOCUS
New clues to disarming the deadliest herpes virus
Patients infected with the human cytomegalovi-
rus, the deadliest form of the herpes virus and
the cause of serious defects in newborn chil-
dren, have a new reason to be hopeful. Researchers
in the IRB Barcelona Laboratory on Structural Biol-
ogy of Proteins and Nucleic Acids have unraveled the
three-dimensional structure of a protein that is es-
sential for the replication of the cytomegalovirus, a
discovery that could potentially lead to finding new
drugs to treat the entire herpes virus family. The
results were published in the journal Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences in September.
When researchers in Miquel Coll’s labora-
tory unraveled the three-dimensional structure
of the nuclease domain of the terminase DNA
packaging complex they came across an unex-
pected clue: They found out that the protein
was not only important for the replication of
the herpes virus, but its shape was very similar
to integrase, a key protein in the propagation
of the AIDS virus. This resemblance led the
laboratory to suspect that raltegravir, the drug
approved in 2007 for the treatment of AIDS,
could also be effective against the herpes virus
family.
“We decided to run experiments with
raltegravir to see if it would also work for
the human cytomegalovirus terminase, and it
did,” explains researcher Marta Nadal, first
author of this finding.
The next step for the laboratory, ac-
cording to Group Leader Miquel Coll, will
be to collaborate with a team of virologists
and chemists “to find ways to improve the
function of raltegravir and alter its formula
to be effective to stop the propagation
New PhD students think outside the box
“The PhD training is one of the best
moments to propel your career and acquire
new technical skills and research experience.
It’s also a great opportunity to think big and
mature as a person,” says PhD student Mariano
Maffei (Italy, 1985). He has
spent his first weeks in Miquel
Pon’s research group soaking
up literature on a family of
enzymes that plays a key role
in cell migration, development
and immune response.
“The adaptation process has been very
smooth,” says new PhD student Natalia Trem-
polec (Poland, 1985). “I was assigned, right
from the start, a mentor from the PhD Student
Council to help me get familiar with my new
surroundings and guide me through the internal
resources at IRB Barcelona.” Trempolec will
be working in Angel Nebreda’s lab to find new
clues on the role of cell signalling in cancer.
Only weeks after joining
the Institute, many new PhD
students have already started
to do lab rotations, an initia-
tive aimed to promote future
collaborations and explore the
science carried out in other research pro-
grammes. “I chose to do my lab rotation in
the Oncology Programme because this was a
unique opportunity to sneak in a completely
different research area like DNA damage,”
explains
physicist Con-
stanze Braasch
(Germany,
1984), new PhD
student in Maria
Macia’s labora-
tory.
Asked about
his expecta-
tions beyond
four years of doing doctoral work, PhD student
in Antonio Celada’s lab Milos Tatarski (Serbia,
1983) says he hopes his thesis results on macro-
phages will contribute to “finding clues for de-
veloping drugs that target immune diseases.”.
Finding an original thesis idea that is distinct from the millions of dissertations already published worldwide is a challenging task.
This year’s class of PhD students has spent their first month in IRB Barcelona laboratories thinking outside the box to find original research approach-es for their thesis work. The students — funded either by “la Caixa/IRB Barcelona International
PhD Programme or exclusively by IRB Barcelona — are joining an established community of more than 150 PhD students currently doing their thesis work in one of the Institute’s laboratories. One month after the PhD Introductory Course held on Septem-ber 6-10, IRB Barcelona talked with four new stu-dents to find out about their first impressions and research experiences in the Institute.
PHO
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. BARBERÍA
(From top) Maffei, Trempolec, Tatarski and Braasch.
Coll (left) and Nadal (right) worked hand in hand to unravel the three-dimensional structure of the terminase nuclease domain (illustrated on computer screen).
❝The PhD training is a great opportunity to think big and mature as a person❞
in vivo October 2010 | Issue 12
of this deadly herpes virus.” The
ultimate goal for the next coming
years is to find a new antiviral drug
that inhibits the replication of the
human cytomegalovirus and that
has minimalside effects, as opposed
to current drugs available in the
market for the treatment of herpes
which have a long list of contrain-
dications.
The human cytomegalovirus is
the most dreaded member of the
herpes virus family. Patients carry-
ing the virus are at higher risk for
complications if they are pregnant
– if the virus infects the fetus it can
provoke irreversible anomalies in
the baby’s brain – and if they have
low immune defenses and are about
to undergo transplants. In people
with AIDS, the human cytomegalo-
virus can cause blindness.
The incidence of the human
congenital cytomegalovirus disease
is higher than Down syndrome in
newborn babies, according to recent
epidemiological studies run in the
USA. Unfortunately there is no vac-
cine against the virus..
Finding new strategies and
technologies to tackle
complex diseases is a com-
mon goal of several IRB Barcelona
research groups who have recently
partnered up in new international
projects funded by the European
Commission.
Through the new FP7 project
NIMBL (Nuclease Immune Mediated
Brain and Lupus-like conditions),
Antonio Celada’s Macrophage Biol-
ogy Group will tackle the Aicardi-
Goutieres Syndrome, a rare genetic
disorder that causes fatal lesions in
children. The team’s ultimate goal for
the next four years will be to find new
mechanisms that allow macrophages
to repair the broken DNA that char-
acterizes this syndrome.
Crystallography experts in Miquel
Coll’s group also joined efforts with
many international research partners
in October as part of the EC-funded
project Silver, a four-year initiative
aimed at finding
new drugs to con-
trol infections that
are caused by RNA viruses and which
kill millions of people every year.
Computational biologists in
Modesto Orozco’s group also
started work this fall toward finding
promising computing techniques and
life-science applications to speed up
research results. The group’s efforts
are part of Scalalife (Scalable Software
Services for Life Science), an EC-
funded project whose goal is to pro-
vide the scientific community with the
latest cutting-edge e-infrastructures
for research by 2013.
The IRB Barcelona Advanced Digi-
tal Microscopy Core Facility, led by
researcher Julien Colombelli, has also
recently joined Euro-Bioimaging, an in-
ternational network of imaging experts
aimed at offering access, services and
training to state-of-the-art bioimaging
technologies across Europe..
Partnering for healthA promising peptide to weaken the African swine fever virusA new peptide designed by IRB Barcelona
chemists in Ernest Giralt’s laboratory could put a stop to the replication of the African swine fever virus, one of the most dreaded epidemic diseases in pigs. Published in the Journal of Virology in September, the group has managed to come up with a new peptide that not only weakens the virus but it also reduces the infection process. According to researcher Teresa Tarragó, this new mechanism to block viral infection could open new avenues for other viral diseases such as AIDS, herpes, rabies and adenoviruses.
➲ New insight into the toxicity of amyloid aggregatesXavier Salvatella’s research group has one of
the most feared processes in patients with Alzheimer’s disease, amyloid aggregation, in its crosshairs. The IRB Barcelona Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics published a new discovery in the September issue of the Journal of Molecular Biology that sheds some light on why amyloid aggregates are toxic and the mechanisms by which they damage cells. The study, first-authored by researcher Maria Mossuto, suggests that toxicity doesn’t depend on the size of the aggregates but on their structural properties.
A step forward to unlocking the microtubule machineryGuided by the suspicion that something had been
left behind, IRB Barcelona researchers in Jens Lüders’ Microtubule Organization Group spent months reanalyz-ing a protein complex that was discovered over 15 years ago and that is crucial in organizing microtubules. The group recently unraveled a new core subunit inside this gamma-tubulin complex that might play a critical role in cells that have stopped dividing and need to organize microtubules in more specialized settings. The study was published in the September issue of Molecular Biology of the Cell and was led by researcher Neus Teixidó.
A sophisticated mechanism to control embryonic development The wings of the fruit fly recently helped the
Development and Morphogenesis in Drosophila Labora-tory to unravel one of the mysteries of embryonic develop-ment. IRB Barcelona researcher Andreu Casali discovered a new cellular mechanism to detect the signaling pathway of Hedgehog, a critical protein in embryonic development which is involved in some types of brain, muscle and skin cancer. If this mechanism found in flies works the same way in humans, Casali says the discovery could lead to new strategies to control Hedgegog and develop drugs down the road to treat the diseases it causes. The results were published in the August’s edition of Science Signaling.
SCIENCE BITES
➲
➲
➲Coll (left) and Nadal (right) worked hand in hand to unravel the three-dimensional structure of the terminase nuclease domain (illustrated on computer screen).
PHO
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A
ON THE SPOT
Muscular dystrophies, degenerative
diseases that lead to severe muscle
weakness, still have no effective
cure. Although some patients diagnosed with
these debilitating conditions can lead normal
lives, for others the disorders can be severely
disabling and in some cases even life threaten-
ing. Andreas Merdes, group leader at the In-
stitute for Developmental Biology (Toulouse)
was at IRB Barcelona on October 1 to present
his latest work on the role of microtubules in
myogenesis.
- What have you found out?
“Microtubules go through a complete reorgani-
zation in muscle cells that today is still poorly
understood. We believe that microtubules play
a key role in the muscles—they are like railroad
tracks that facilitate the orientation of all the
elements required for muscle contraction.
Our ultimate goal is to understand the way
microtubules are reorganized in muscle cells to
unravel the defective mechanisms that lead to
muscle weakness and find new ways to tackle
dystrophies.”
- What would happen in the body if microtu-bules failed to function properly?
“Malfunction of microtubules and associated
proteins has been linked to several known dis-
eases, including brain development disorders,
kidney conditions and even neurodegenerative
diseases such as Alzheimer’s. No higher organ-
ism can live without microtubules, they are
essential for life. Without them there would be
no cell division and inheriting genetic informa-
tion would be impossible. Even bacteria need
microtubule-related proteins to survive!”.
❝Microtubules play a key role in muscle formation❞
Aparadigm-breaking discovery in
structural biology has been the
fact that about two thirds of the
proteins in eukaryotic cells are predicted
to lack stable structure or contain large
disordered regions. The importance of
unustructured proteins is in striking
contrast with the current data available in
the Protein Data Bank, the main source
of our understanding of proteins from a
structural point of view and which mostly
contains information on proteins with
only well-defined structures.
Unlike well-folded proteins, intrin-
sically disordered ones do not crystallize,
as they sample an astronomical number
of conformations. Unstructured regions
are often considered just as linkers or
mere “decorations” without structural
and functional interest. This paradigm is
now changing
as a result of
the efforts of
a number of
pioneers, many
of them present
at the IRB Bar-
celona Biomed
Conference on Intrinsically Disordered
Proteins in Biomedicine held in Barcelona
on October 4-6, and organized in collabo-
ration with the BBVA Foundation.
Intrinsically disordered proteins play
a key role in the survival of eukaryotic cells.
In fact, there’s a striking proposal which
states that disordered proteins are one of
the features that enabled organisms to attain
an organization level beyond that of pro-
karyotes. It’s not surprising that eighty per
cent of the proteins linked to cancer – asso-
ciated to altered regulation of key processes
– have long disordered regions.
The fact that this association between
disorder and higher organization seems
controversial highlights the conceptual chal-
lenge we are facing. Established paradigms
such as the relationship between structure
and function have to be reinterpreted and
take into account the fact that disordered
proteins, and not only static-folded struc-
tures, can also perform function.
There’s a clear need for a shift of para-
digm from static structures to disordered
ensembles, but we have still to learn the
rules of the game. We are at the dawn
of a new era in the understanding of the
structural basis of the organization of
higher organisms, and there is no doubt
that flexibility and disorder are at the root
of their complexity. .
Beyond static structures
Coming soonBarcelona BioMed Conferences
October 25-27, 2010: Macrophages
and Inflammation
November 8-10, 2010: Cancer
Metabolism
March 21-23, 2011: Mitochondrial
Autophagy
September 19-21, 2011: Signal
Rewiring and Addiction in Cancer
October 24-26, 2011: Macromolecular
Dynamics
Miquel Pons/Pau Bernadó
❝Eighty per cent of the proteins linked to cancer have long disordered regions❞
Barcelona BioMed Seminar series
PHO
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. BARBERÍA
PHO
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RIEGA
IRB Barcelona researchers Miquel Pons and Pau Bernadó (top left and right) were the local or-ganizers of the Barcelona BioMed Conference devoted to disordered proteins.
05in vivo October 2010 | Issue 12
More than 1,300 life scientists de-
scended on Barcelona in early Sep-
tember to take part in the EMBO
Meeting - one of the year’s most important
events in molecular biology. Lucky for IRB
Barcelona, the event was held just around the
corner at the Palau de Congressos and provided
a perfect opportunity for a group of scientists
to take a detour and visit the Institute.
An enthusiastic bunch of predocs and post-
docs from across Europe signed up for the tour
and got a first-hand look at some of IRB Bar-
celona’s activities as they visited the Advanced
Digital Microscopy Facility and the Colorectal
Cancer Lab led by Eduard Batlle (above).
They grilled our scientists with questions
about research, services and possibilities for
training at IRB Barcelona. As the tour ended
and the visitors headed back to the EMBO
Meeting, it was clear that they left needing little
convincing that Barcelona is a great place to
follow a career in science..
The Advanced Digital Micros-
copy (ADM) Core Facility has
recently introduced a revolution-
ary technology into its portfolio of services.
In partnership with the company CYTOO
Cell Architects, the facility is now offer-
ing to its users a new
adhesive micropattern
technology that will
facilitate all processes
that call for the direct
observation of cells
under a microscope.
A few centres are
now providing this
technology and the
ADM Core Facility
has become the first
Spanish reference site.
“The originality of
micropatterning is that you can work in a
high-throughput manner, in a reproducible
way, ” explains Julien Colombelli, manager
of the core facility.
Up to now, in order to study cells under a
microscope they had to be placed in a random
fashion in contact with other cells and they
adopted diverse shapes. Adhesive micropat-
terns capture cells in a regular array and cells
spread out on them, adopting a specific shape.
This approach allows scientists to establish the
exact location of a given cell and prevents cell
clustering. Not only do the cells present all
the same shape, they also adopt a very similar
intracellular organization and this feature
makes the results much
more reproducible.
Previous to this develop-
ment it was necessary to
study thousands of cells
to get significant results.
These can now be
achieved with less than a
hundred.
The micropat-
terned products (both
in chip and microplate
formats) that CYTOO
develops consist of a
glass surface covered with patterned adhe-
sive proteins (so that cells adhere to this site
and adopt a given shape) surrounded by
a repulsive coating (to prevent cells from
adhering to the rest of the surface).
For more information on this technology
contact [email protected].
A revolutionary technique
Cells adhere to a micropattern allowing for easier study under the microscope.
Trading in the usual backdrop of the
Montseny mountains for Barcelo-
na’s historical center, IRB Barcelona
researchers hit the town this year for their
annual retreat, held on October 14-15.
More than 100 scientists, including group
leaders, facility managers, postdocs, and the
new crop of PhD students, gathered at the
Residència d’Investigadors (run by CSIC)
for two days of intensive discussions about
current IRB Barcelona science, and to take a
look at future directions.
Multidisciplinarity provided the frame-
work for the activities, as sessions were
organized around scientific themes, rather
than by programme. RNA Biology, Kinases
and Disease, Polymer Accumulation pro-
vided much food for thought (as did lunch at
a nearby salad bar), as researchers combined
their diverse expertise and knowledge in
these areas.
In addition to all the science talk, par-
ticipants heard from guest speakers Michela
Bertero (CRG), who gave valuable tips on
securing funding for collaborative research
projects from the EU, and Agustín Alconada
(ABG Patentes), who discussed lessons
learned from dealing with cases of intellectu-
al property in the field of biomedicine..
An EMBO meeting detour
Nahia Barbería
IRB Barcelona retreat: city break style
IMAG
E: ®CYTO
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in vivo October 2010 | Issue 1206
❝
FACES TO NAMES
Marco Milán. Group Leader, IRB Barcelona Development and Growth Control Laboratory
Singapore is striving to become the scientific hub of Asia...and it will❞
Aradical lifestyle change can be a very
mind-opening experience, especially
when it involves working on an island in
Southeast Asia among Chinese, Malays, Indians,
Asians and Caucasians. “Arriving in Singapore
was like landing on Mars at first,” said IRB Bar-
celona group leader Marco Milán just a few days
upon return from this Asian island. Milán took his
family to spend the entire summer in Singapore
– from June to the end of September – as visiting
professor at the Institute of Molecular and Cell
Biology (IMCB) and at the National University
of Singapore.
- What was it like living on an Asian island?
“Singapore is one of the fastest growing econo-
mies in the world. Their gross domestic product
is expanding at an annual rate of more than
20%. The quality of life there is spectacular. It’s
an evergreen city—the views from our eleventh-
floor apartment were of nothing but trees and
vegetation. Also, the climate is perfect, housing
is very affordable, the food is amazingly cheap
and acoustic pollution is pretty much inexistent.
Cars don’t honk there! Singapore is a big city
but it still preserves townish things that big
European cities have lost.”
- For example?
“If an elderly on a walking stick gets on a bus,
the driver won’t take off until she finds a seat.
Or if the bus driver sees that you’re running late
he will stop and wait for you to arrive. I remem-
ber once in a restaurant we were pretty shocked
to see three nine year-old girls eating without
their parents. When they went to order food
they left their purses and a fifty-euro bill on the
table. Nobody stole anything. It’s a completely
safe city, kids go out on their own all the time.
There’s a feeling of protection everywhere.”
- How is street safety sustained?
“One would think that sustaining a dictator-
ship without police forces is impossible, but
believe it or not, it’s not true, at least in Singa-
pore. There are no police on the streets, you
never see them. I think everyone there is very
aware of the things that can’t be done and so
they just don’t cross the line.”
- How is the coexistence between the differ-ent ethnic groups?
“The biggest Hindu temple happens to be in
a Buddhist district. It’s amazing to see how
Buddhism, Hinduism and the Islamic religion
coexist in harmony with no conflict. It’s a spec-
tacular example of integration and acceptance
for the world.”
- What was it like to be a foreign scientist?
“The hospitality I was greeted with when I ar-
rived in IMCB was quite amazing. They offered
me two offices! The fact is that forty-two per
cent of the population in Singapore are foreign-
ers and the government is investing a large sum
of money in science. They don’t know what
research cuts are there. Singapore is striving to
become the scientific hub of Asia...and it will.”
- Is science organized differently there?
“The structure of the lab and daily work
routines are pretty much identical. What really
struck me was that most of the researchers
were newcomers or had been in the Institute
only since 2000. The government is convincing
foreign experts to renounce to their positions
in their country of origin and go to Singapore
to work full-time. There are many renowned
scientists who have already moved there. The
city is becoming very competitive and is grow-
ing really fast.”
- One day the island might be overgrown...
“In fact, Singapore is facing serious problems
with neighboring territories because the city is
importing soil extracted from nearby coun-
tries to be able to extend its land mass. There
are islands in Indonesia that are disappearing
because of this digging. It has also generated
problems with Malaysia because the digging
has changed the ocean levels and many ships
can’t make it there anymore.”
- What did you learn after three months of immersion in Oriental culture?
“I realized that what we call quality of life in
the West is in fact questionable and that there
are other ways of life completely different to
our culture that may be very enriching. Singa-
pore is like the oasis of Asia. The European is
not the only model, and it may not be the best
one either.”.
ANNA ALSINA
Milán’s trip to Singapore was part of an ongoing collaboration on microRNAs with genomics expert Stephen Cohen, acting director of the IMCB.
07in vivo October 2010 | Issue 12
Acknowledged twice in a row
An intense scien-
tific discussion on
systems biology
between Nobel Prize
winner Tim Hunt and IRB Barcelona
PhD student Roland Pache was the first
film in a video series of dialogs between
Nobel laureates and young students to
be released on Nature’s website in Sep-
tember. Pache was among the only five
PhD students chosen by Nature to take
part in this series, shot in July during the
60th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting.
On film with a Nobel laureate
IRB Barcelona
Group Leader Patrick
Aloy got the green
light in September
to organize and coordinate ‘Network
Medicine Approaches to Human
Disease: From Computers to the Clin-
ics’, a conference scheduled for 2011 in
Barcelona. Financed through the 2010
ICREA Conference Award, the event
will bring together leading minds in the
world of cell networks, systems biology,
drug design and personalized medicine
to discuss the latest and most promising
network-based therapeutic strategies to
fight complex diseases.
From computers to the clinics
Miquel Pons’
research contribu-
tions to nuclear
magnetic resonance
in Spain landed him the GERMN award
in September, given by the NMR special-
ized group of the Spanish Royal Society
of Chemistry. The award came just two
months after he was appointed trea-
surer of the EUROMAR society, which
organizes the main annual magnetic
resonance meeting in Europe.
IN BRIEF
T here’s new hope for overweight people.
BioGlane, a spin-off company from the
Spanish National Research Council, an-
nounced in September the discovery of a form
of sugar that can prevent weight gain while
also promoting healthy intestinal flora. “We’ve
found out that D-fagomine – a natural variant
of sugar present in buckwheat – combats excess
weight effectively and safely by reducing the
speed at which the body absorbs refined sugars
and starches,” says Josep Lluís Torres, CSIC
researcher and co-founder of BioGlane.
Using proprietary enzyme technology,
BioGLane is producing D-fagomine under the
commercial name of Fagopure®. The company
is offering a new concept in functional foods:
“Fagopure® not only contributes to developing
healthy and tasty food, but its regular use also
favors the adhesion of probiotics, the friendly
bacteria necessary for digestive health,” ex-
plains Sergi Pumarola, director and co-founder
of BioGlane. The spin-off plans to begin the
process to request authorization to commer-
cialize this product in the United States and
Europe at the beginning of 2011.
BioGLane is supported by Genoma España,
Caja Navarra, and other organizations belong-
ing to central and regional governments..
The PCB-based spin-off BioGlane discovers a new use for a natural variant of sugar present in buckwheat that could help reduce excess weight.
NEWS FROM THE PARK
A functional food to reduce excess weight
PHO
TO: ®
BIOG
LANE
Science and art have been lifelong
passions of PhD student Laura
Orellana. Recently she had the
opportunity to combine the two as she
published not only her first article as a
first author – she also got to showcase her
artistic talents on the journal’s cover.
The September issue of the American
Chemical Society’s Journal of Chemical
Theory and Computation boasts a charcoal
illustration she did of the C-α carbons net-
work of proteins, which provides the basis for
a new elastic network model that she and her
colleagues in Modesto Orozco’s Molecular
Modeling and Bioinformatics Group developed
to describe protein flexibility.
Superimposed on top of this protein net-
work is the structure of a protein channel and
the conformational ensemble predicted by the
new method that she generated using molecu-
lar visualization software. The new theoretical
model produces results close to those obtained
with the usual molecular dynamics simulations,
which require supercomputers such as the
MareNostrum, but with a much lower cost – it
can run on a laptop! The key is a minimalist
description of the protein structures using resi-
dues instead of atoms, which allows researchers
to trace large structural changes important to
protein function.
Producing the cover image proved to be a
challenge, confesses Orellana. In addition to
developing the programmes to do the science,
she had to master graphic design software in
order to integrate computer-generated images
seamlessly with her own illustration..
The science and art of molecular dynamics
SPOTLIGHT
In vivo, issue 12. Published by the Institute for Research in Biomedicine. Office of Communications & External Relations. Barcelona Science Park. Baldiri Reixac, 10. 08028 Barcelona, Spain. www.irbbarcelona.org Editor: Anna Alsina. Associate Editor: Sarah Sherwood. Contributors: Nahia Barbería, Pau Bernadó, Miquel Pons, Tanya Yates. Design: Aymerich Comunicació. Printing: Puresa. Graphic Production: La Trama. Legal deposit: B-1731-2010. This document has been printed on recycled paper. To subscribe or unsubscribe from in vivo email [email protected] © IRB Barcelona
www.irbbarcelona.org
Never too young for research
This summer Jens Lüders’ lab at IRB
Barcelona hosted a very young researcher.
18-year-old Antoni Planella from Lleida
was part of one of the first groups of 50 secondary
school students to participate in the ‘Joves i Cièn-
cia’ programme, a three-year initiative organized
by Caixa Catalunya’s Obra Social.
- What did you do at IRB Barcelona?
“I spent the summer working with researcher
Sabine Klischies performing cell and molecular
biology experiments. I learned lots of techniques,
including PCR, electrophoresis, transfections, im-
munoprecipitation, Western blots... you name it!”
- How would you sum up your experience?
“It was extremely useful. Not only have I learnt
tons of things and new techniques but I have also
gained insight into the day-to-day routine of a true
scientist and I think that is what is most important.
I also learnt some English! The whole team was
incredibly helpful and constructive.”
- Do you know what you want to do in the
future?
“Right now I’m starting my degree in biomedicine.
I still don’t know what I want to do when I finish
but I think I will probably continue studying. I
would like to end up working in a lab and also
teaching some classes at a school or university. I
still have a long way to go.”.Nahia Barbería
NEW AT IRB BARCELONA
Ivan del Barco (Spain, 1972) is widely traveled. He has lived in Toronto, Heidelberg and finally Madrid, his last stop before he came to IRB Barcelona to work as Research Associate in Angel Nebreda’s group. Ivan works on mouse cancer models and the lab already has at its disposal models
for colon, breast and lung cancer. He likes Barcelona, although he is a Real Madrid supporter and has detected many Barça fans at IRB Barcelona. Asked about the possibility of returning to his hometown one day, Ivan says it’s still a big question mark. “The life of a scientist is very wavering because it’s difficult to find stable employment. I hope that, little by little, more opportunities are made available in Spain and I don’t need to move abroad again.”
After nearly five years of working with zebrafish in the Center for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, Mariana Muzzopappa (Argentina) decided to make a move and switch back to the fruit fly, a model she studied in depth during her thesis. She joined Marco Milán’s research group as a Postdoctoral Fellow in September to help the team pursue new hypotheses. She will spend many hours analyzing fruit fly wing discs under the microscope to understand factors that govern their development. Mariana likes to spend part of her free time hiking and has recently enrolled a yoga teachers’ training course to become a certified teacher one day.
Esther Fernández (Spain, 1983) has been quite busy handling administrative tasks since her arrival in IRB Bar-celona in September. As the new Structural and Computa-tional Biology Programme Secretary, she will be perform-ing a variety of administrative tasks, including providing support in the organization of the Barcelona BioMed Seminars, making travel arrangements and assisting conference speakers invited by the programme, help-ing PhD students to clarify questions, and monitoring the programme’s annual budget. It’s not the first time Esther steps into the world research. In her previ-ous position at the UPC’s School of Architecture of Vallès she provided adminis-trative support to researchers working on sustainable architecture.”
Planella spent his first summer in the programme living in a hostel/lab in Planes de Son, a center full of activities for science enthusiasts located in the Pyrenees and run by Caixa Catalunya’s Obra Social.
An engineer specialized in signal processing has joined the Advanced Digital Microscopy Core Facility as Senior Research Officer. Sébastien Tosi’s (France, 1977) work will consist of helping researchers to get the most out of their scientific images by designing image process-
ing algorithms and custom-made software. After completing his PhD studies in telecommunications in Ireland, Sébastien worked for several years in a Span-ish semiconductor company and this is the first time he is getting involved in biomedicine. He is motivated by the idea of participating in a process that can benefit humanity. “One of the things I like most about my new position is that it stands at the crossroads between optics, biology and image processing,” he com-ments. Sébastien has lived in Barcelona before and really loves the city.