October 8
We had an honor to host Dr. Sarela Garcia-Santamarina, from ITQB NOVA, who was talking about
‘Emergence of community behaviors in the gutmicrobiota upon drug treatment’.
Short Bio
My scientific career is dedicated to exploring the biology behind microbial adaptation, with a strong focus on oxidative stress, metal biology, and microbial interactions. I did a PhD in Professor Elena Hidalgo’s lab at the University Pompeu Fabra, where I studied oxidative stress signaling and its toxic effects in fission yeast. This work led to the discovery of mechanisms by which cells respond to oxidative stress and contributed to 14 peer-reviewed articles, 7 of which as first author. My growing interest in protein thiols and metal ions drove me to pursue a postdoctoral position in Professor Dennis J. Thiele’s lab at Duke University, USA. There, Iinvestigated the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans, examining how it manipulates copper concentrations in the host to survive, identifying key proteins involved in copper detoxification and import. This resulted in 6 publications, 4 of which as first author.To expand my skill set in high-throughput experimental design and data analysis, I secured a Marie Curie fellowship to join the laboratories of Nassos Typas, Peer Bork, and Kiran Patil at EMBL Heidelberg. My work focused on understanding how the gut microbiota responds to drugs when grown in isolation versus community settings, finding emergent phenotypic traits in 25% of cases. This research was just accepted for publication in Cell.Since 2021 I am the principal investigator of the Human Microbiota – Xenobiotics Interactions lab at ITQB NOVA in Portugal, where we aim to further explore gut microbial metabolism at the gene and strain level, particularly in competition with other microbes and host cells. By integrating expertise in metals biology and microbiome research, I seek to uncover the role of metals in shaping gut microbial metabolism and their implications for human health.