- Invitado: Mateo Sánchez López
- Título: “Engineering molecular tools for synthetic biology and neuroscience”
- Fecha: Martes, 07/03/2023 – 12:30 h (GMT+2)
- Organizado por CICA
- Salón de actos del CICA
Una breve reseña de nuestro conferenciante:
I received my PhD in organic chemistry in 2014 from the University of Santiago de Compostela. The focus of my thesis was on the design and synthesis of fluorescent DNA binders. For example, I envisioned a pioneering strategy that consists of using an organometallic catalyst in living cells to trigger a biological event, such as DNA binding.
As I was eager to learn molecular biology and directed evolution, in 2015 I joined the group of Prof. Alice Ting at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and later in the Department of Genetics at Stanford University. I was awarded with an EMBO long-term postdoctoral fellowship, and my work was focused on the development of new molecular tools for cell biology and neuroscience. In 2020, I decided to join the Synthetic Biology Centre in the department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London, to work with Prof. Tom Ellis to gain further expertise in the development of molecular biology using engineering principles. I was awarded with a Marie-Curie Fellowship for my project involving the synthesis of artificial chromosomes and synthetic genomes.
I have recently been awarded with a Wellcome Trust Career Development Award and I am starting my independent group in the department of chemistry at the University of Cambridge.
In this seminar, I will talk about the development of molecular tools such as FLARE (Fast Light- and-Activity Regulated Expression) or scFLARE (single-chain FLARE), which transform a transient signal, like neuronal activity or a protein-protein interaction into a long-lasting one such as the expression of a reporter gene. These tools consist of a light- and calcium-gated transcription factor that drives the expression of any reporter gene, which in turn, can be used for the discovery and manipulation of neuronal circuits underlying specific behaviours. Later, I will discuss the development of a genetic circuit for the studying of DNA double-strand breaks repair mechanisms in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and how depending on the pathway chosen, is associated with different transcriptional readouts.
http://www.mateosanchezlab.com/