People
Current Members
Modesto Redrejo Rodríguez (PI, Associate Professor) 
Modesto is Associate Professor (in Spanish “Profesor Permanente Laboral”) at the Biochemistry Department of the School of Medicine of one of the largest universities in Madrid, the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM).
Since his PhD thesis, working on DNA repair mechanisms of ASFV (large DNA virus), he has been very interested in DNA replication and repair mechanisms and how these mechanisms evolved. After that, he moved to the Murat Saparbaev’s lab at the Gustave Roussy Institute (Villejuif, nearby Paris) to work on Base Excision Repair enzymes. Then, in 2011, he moved back to Madrid as Postdoc and later on Senior Research Associate in the Margarita Salas’ lab at the Molecular Biology Center (CBM) where he focused in prokaryotic models of DNA replication. After moving to the UAM in 2018 as Assistant Professor to start the R’n’R Lab, he was promoted to Associate Professor in November 2023.
He is very interested in the use of multidisciplinary approaches, using biochemistry, structural biology, genetics and bioinformatics to deal with biological problems. A full list of Modesto’s publications can be found here.
Juan J. Arredondo Lamas (Associate Professor)
Juan is a very experienced researcher in genetics and molecular biology of model organisms, particularly Drosophila melanogaster. After several months of sharing the lab with us and providing very interesting “outsider” discussions, he decided to join the crew. He will be very helpful in the students’ supervision and focus in the biological role of pipolins.
Marta Cobo Simón (Assistant Professor, 2025- )
Marta is an expert in bioinformatics, bacterial genomics, evolutionary biology, and metagenomics. Her research explores bacterial population biology, mobile genetic elements, and the resistome. She will collaborate with us on the characterization of novel pipolins in diverse ecosystems.
Carmen Mayoral Campos (PhD Student, 2019- )
Carmen is graduated in Biology and MSc in Biomolecules and Cell Dynamics (UAM). She is working in structure-function studies of piPolB, focused on understanding DNA priming capacity of these new DNA polymerases.
Víctor Mateo Cáceres (PhD student, 2019-)
Víctor began his research career with his BSc thesis on the biological role of piPolBs in bacteria. His initial project focused on characterizing a piPolB mutant within a naturally occurring E. coli pipolin. During the COVID-19 lockdown, he transitioned to a bioinformatics-oriented project and subsequently enrolled in the Master’s program in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology. In the first year of his Master’s, he received a Collaboration Fellowship to contribute to the development of the ExplorePipolin pipeline.
In 2023, Víctor began his PhD, focusing on the phylogenetic and functional characterization of pipolins through an integrated computational and experimental (“wet lab”) approach.
Eduardo D. Lozano Escobar (PhD Student, 2023-)
Eduardo earned his degree in Biotechnology from UEx and later completed his Master’s thesis in Bioinformatics at UAM (2023–2024) in our lab. His research focused on characterizing novel lactic acid bacterial genomes, in collaboration with Dr. Antonia Picón’s group at INIA-CSIC.
He was awarded an FPU PhD fellowship and will return to the lab in early 2025 to pursue his doctoral studies. His PhD project aims to analyze the transcriptomics of betatectiviruses to better understand virus–host interactions at the molecular level, in collaboration with Annika Gillis (MIAE lab, UCLouvain).
Juan Carlos Ramírez Montans (PhD Student, 2025)
Juan Carlos holds a degree in Biochemistry from UEx and joined the lab for his Master’s thesis in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at UAM. His work employed a multidisciplinary approach, integrating structural and sequence analyses to explore the diversity and evolutionary history of viral terminal proteins (TPs).
In his PhD, he will combine computational and biochemical methodologies to uncover novel minimalist DNA replicons in the lab, with the long-term goal of harnessing them for innovative biotechnological applications.
Old lab pictures
Alumni
Kilian Rueda Bolaño (MSc Student, 2025)
Kilian carried out his Thesis for the Master’s Degree in Virology (@UCM). His provided the first insights into new defense functions in pipolins. His work is part of a collaboration with José A. Escudero (MBA lab, @UCM).
Laura Ferrer Vazquez (BSc Student, 2025)
Laura worked with us during her last year of BSc Degree in Biochemistry. Her work is related with the role of piPolB in DNA damage tolerance in E. coli.
Alba Lozano (BSc Student, 2023-2024)
Alba started his Undergrad Project (TFG) last October. She’s Fourth Year Student from Biology Degree at UCM (Universidad Complutense de Madrid).
She worked in the characterization of a new DNA polymerase, the viral YerA41 PolA (see the Paper by our collaborator Mikael Skurnik).
Rodrigo de la LLave (Undergrad TFG, 2023-24)
Rodrigo worked with Juan to develop the next step in assessing the biological role of piPolB in the context of diverse E. coli systems.
Esmeralda Solar Venero (Postdoc, 2022-2023)
Esme is an expert molecular microbiologist from Buenos Aires. Her project was related with pipolins diversity and mobilization. She is currently Postdoc Research Assistant in the Molecular infection biology lab (CNB-CSIC?).
Nada Znaidi (Visiting PhD student, 2022-2023)
Nada is a PhD student from Université Tunis El Manar, directed by Prof. Samia Réjiba. Since September 2022, she spendt some months in 2022 and 2023 in our lab, analyzing the prevalence and genetic structure of pipolins from E. coli clinical isolates.
Diego Duarte Zara (Master Student, 2021-2023)
Diego joined the lab in 2021 to work on piPolB biological role for his Bachelor’s thesis, working with Juan and Carmen. He obtained very interesting results that we will further explore during his Master’s thesis during 2023. He is currently PhD student (CNIC?).
Juan Carlos Martín Esteban (MSc Student, 2020-2022)
Alejandro Serrano Sánchez (BSc Thesis, 2022)
Carlos D. Ordóñez Cencerrado (PhD Student, 2017-2022)
Carlos earned an MSc in Virology and he is interested in molecular biology, virology, biochemistry, structural biology and biotechnological application of virus. He carried out his PhD thesis working on the study of Translesion Synthesis capacity of B-family DNA polymerases also can carry out a faithful and processive DNA replication. He also performing structural-function studies and analysis of the influence of metal cofactor during the process.
Find him on Researchgate,
He is currently Postdoc at the Synthetic Biology lab (CIC-BioGune?)
Mario Rodríguez Mestre (PhD Student, 2020-2021 )
Liubov Chuprikova (Bioinformatics MSc, 2019-2020)
Liuba developed ExplorePipolin, a pipeline for the annotation and characterization of pipolins. Her Master thesis was carried out under the joint supervision of Modesto and María de Toro, head of the Genomics and Bioinformatics facility of CIBIR, and an expert in the annotation of prokaryotic genomes and mobilome. We are grateful to Liuba’s help after her Thesis, which allowed us to publish ExplorePipolin in 2022.
She is currently PhD student at the Division of Virus-associated carcinogenesis (DKFZ?)
Irene Díaz García (BSc Student, 2020-2021)
Lorenzo Vargas Román (BSc Student, 2020-2021)
Ana Lechuga Mateo (MSc and PhD Student, 2016-2020)
Ana carried out her MSc in Virology in Salas’ lab under Modesto’s supervision and then she decided to stay in the lab for Ph.D. She worked in two different but complementary aspects of Bam35 tectivirus biology. First, she is characterizing viral DNA binding proteins and their role in TP-DNA genome replication. Moreover, she has been the main responsible for the VirHost-omics project, using a Y2H screen and next-generation sequence to study virus-host relationships by high-through.
She is currently Postdoc at the Laboratory of Gene Technology @KU-Leuven