About us:

We are fascinated about understanding how translational regulation, and in particular ribosomal heterogeneity, can contribute to the biological adaptation of bacterial pathogens. We have a special focus on Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the causative agent of human tuberculosis. This bacterium can cause human tuberculosis, accounting for approximately 1.3 million deaths a year, but can also persist for decades as an asymptomatic latent infection, with a potential for disease reactivation during an individual’s lifetime. The pool of latently infected people is currently estimated to be one third of the world’s population. We are trying to decipher how selective translation of different types of mRNA transcripts can contribute to the persistence and drug susceptibility of M. tuberculosis. We use a combination of cutting-edge techniques and bioinformatic analysis to try to answer this question. Find out more about our work in publications, or its members here.

About me:

I am currently an Assistant Professor at the Infection Biology Department, within the Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases at LSHTM. I completed a degree in Biology at the University of Valencia in Spain, followed by a MSc in Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology at the Cavanilles Institute for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology in Valencia. Also at this institution, I completed a PhD focused on the characterisation of circadian clock genes in insects. In October 2010, I joined the Mycobacterial Research Unit at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, to work as a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Douglas Young on the development of sequence-based transcriptomics in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In June 2015, I established my research group at the LSHTM after being awarded an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council.