Colorado State University

During my scientific career, I have ventured in a wide array of different research topics, such as metabolism, COVID-19 infection, aging and transgene silencing. Among the themes that I have studied, the one that fascinates me the most is how organisms use small RNAs to adapt to their environment, which is involved in many of the projects that I have been working on.

I began my research career by studying how miRNAs influence the identity of mouse adipocytes in cell culture. Afterwards, I began using C. elegans to study how different tissues interact to coordinate a longevity and reproductive response to caloric restriction involving small RNAs. Finally, I studied how the Argonaute RDE-1 regulates somatic transgene silencing. I got my main PhD projects interrupted for 1 year by the pandemic, when I participated on projects related to COVID-19 resulting in 3 manuscripts.

As many of the projects that I worked on involved small RNAs pathways, I began reading more this literature and became intrigued by its complexity and importance for all aspects of biology. I also became fascinated by C. elegans as a model organism because of the wide variety of tools and simple experiments that can be performed on this worm to answer fundamental scientific questions.

My diverse background led to the development of a broad toolset of skills to tackle challenges which I faced during my projects, being able to work with C. elegans, cell culture and human samples through the perspective of genetics, molecular and cell biology.