My career has focused on the study of the interconnection of nuclear processes and its relevance on human diseases such as cancer, neuromuscular dystrophies and developmental alterations. During my PhD in Dr. Aguilera’s laboratory at University of Seville, I studied the links between the mRNA metabolism and genetic instability demonstrating that the regulation of R-loops can prevent mutations leading to disease. I was supported by two PhD fellowships (FPU and Junta de Andalucía fellowship) and I mastered on molecular biology techniques. In this period, I published 9 articles, two as first author, that have accumulated more than 118 cites in high-impact journals (MBoC 2008, 2011, PloS Genet. 2009, JCB 2009, MCB 2011, EMBO 2011, NAR 2014).

Fascinated by how nuclear envelope (NE) influenced gene expression, in 2009 I moved to Dr. Askjaer’s laboratory, at Andalusian Centre for Developmental Biology (CABD), Spain, where I developed the DamID technique for the first time in C. elegans. With such technology, I contributed to find the molecular mechanism that explains how H3K9me facilitates the anchoring of DNA to the NE to promote gene silencing (Cell 2012). This study was part of collaboration with the laboratory of Dr. S. Gasser at FMI, Basel, where I learnt the bioinformatics tools necessary for the analysis of both microarray and high-throughput sequencing results. Besides, DamID allowed me to show that the NE protein emerin controls gene expression of muscle and neuronal genes opening new lines of research for the treatment of the human Emery-Dreifuss muscular dystrophy (Genome Biol 2014). Moreover, I supervised the work of students that led to the discovery of a new interaction between the nucleoporin Nup107 and the mitotic spindle assembly checkpoint protein MAD1 (MBoC 2012).

In 2012, my work with Dr. Martínez-Morales at CABD, analysing ChIPseq and RNAseq data identified key regulatory regions for the control of the gene networks that sustain the vertebrate body plan during development (Genome Res 2014).

In 2013, I moved to Dr. Groth’s laboratory at University of Copenhagen, to study how the epigenetic information was maintained during cell division. I was awarded with the prestigious Lundbeck Foundation grant.  With this support, I developed a new technology called ChORseq, able to get, for the first time, genome-wide information of the epigenetic dynamics during DNA replication. (Mol Cell 2018 F1000Prime recommendation).

In 2016, I came back to Spain and collaborated with Dr. Cortés-Ledesma at Cabimer in the context of an ERC project studying the impact of DNA topology and DNA repair on DNA replication and with the Dr. Martín Broto at IBiS performing transcriptomic analysis to search for new predictive biomarkers relevant to develop new treatments for advanced sarcomas.

Now, as independent researcher at University of Seville I am studying how epigenetic changes occurring during DNA replication can impact transcription and mRNA metabolism as well to contribute to cancer progression.