Marie Curie Senior Research Fellow

Email:

Office: B130

@pedrojcy91

Research Groups

Dave Scanlan Group

Research Clusters

Environment & Ecology

Microbiology & Infectious Disease

Current Research

My current research focuses on understanding the functional differences between α and β-cyanobacteria and their carboxysomes and RuBisCOs such that we can explain why α-cyanobacteria with form IA RuBisCO globally dominate aquatic (marine and freshwater) ecosystems. To address this, I am using previous bioinformatics and ecogenomics works on freshwater, marine and brackish picocyanobacteria from the cluster 5 as a model to test various hypotheses and develop the CYANORUB project. In particular, we want to investigate the growth and CO₂ fixation capacity of model marine and freshwater α-cyanobacteria across fluctuations in carbonate chemistry and pHs. Then we aim to characterize and compare the biochemistry of form I RuBisCO’s from model marine and freshwater α- and β- cyanobacterial models. Finally, we are evaluating the potential to express a form IA RuBisCO and α-carboxysomes into a β-cyanobacterial model.

Broader interests and activities

In the past my research has focused in the study and comparison of cluster 5 picocyanobacteria and marine-brackish-freshwater transitions in the microbial world using various “omics” approaches. Primarily, I used comparative metagenomics and ecogenomics analyses between aquatic systems, studying the microbiota from a diversity of habitats such as the largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world (Lake Baikal), the largest meromictic and euxinic water mass (Black Sea), various reservoirs and meromictic lakes and several oceanic regimes. Then, narrowing down to individual taxa, I have elucidated the main genomic and proteomic differences between microbes inhabiting saline (marine/brackish) and freshwater systems. I have targeted key microbial groups such as the SAR11 clade, Thaumarchaeota and cluster 5 picocyanobacteria (Synechococcus/Cyanobium) with much of my current interest in these last and enigmatic photosynthesizers,, having successfully isolated hundreds of isolates from lakes and reservoirs worldwide. Using genomic data from these ecologically relevant photosynthetic microbes, I recently revealed the mechanistic and molecular differences between freshwater, brackish and marine counterparts in a collaboration with Prof. David Scanlan, Dr. Richard Puxty (University of Warwick), Dr. Cristiana Callieri (CNR-IRSA), Prof. Antonio Camacho (Universidad de Valencia) and Prof. Francisco Rodriguez-Valera at the Universidad Miguel Hernández (where I did my PhD), who has pioneered the metagenomics field in Spain, and has a well-recognized trajectory in the study of evolutionary genomics from aquatic habitats, mostly involving salterns and the Mediterranean Sea. Currently, I am also studying a wide variety of freshwater habitats, i.e. reservoirs, meromictic lakes and wetlands with an ecological and genomics (so called “ecogenomics”) perspective with the aid of Prof. Antonio Camacho