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.

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(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).

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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

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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 microscopy@irbbarcelona.org.

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

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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

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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 info@irbbarcelona.org © 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.