Ayelén Perez Falcón

Email: ayelen.perez@irta.cat 

Affiliation: Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB), Spain
CReSA, IRTA

Education and experience:
Since a young age, I have felt amazed by microbiology and molecular biology. For this reason, I studied Biotechnology, graduating in December 2019 (National University of Rosario in Argentina, Faculty of Biochemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences). This degree takes 5 years in which at the end there is a research project thesis. My research project consisted in the characterization of Bacillus subtilis mutant strain and the study of lipid synthesis and sporulation process (Microbial Physiology Laboratory at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology of Rosario in Argentina). During this work I have gained training in microbiology and molecular biology techniques.

During my studies, I did a Research Internship in Laboratory of genetics of plant-microorganism interactions at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology of Rosario. In which I studied the role of a protein from Xanthomonas citri subsp. Citri in bacterial physiology and plant-pathogen interaction. In addition, I had a position as a Teaching Assistant in the Analytical Chemistry Department for 5 years.

From November 2020 to May 2023, I had worked for a research and development start-up in Rosario, which specializes in agrobiotechnology. In this company, synthetic biology and gene editing are combined in order to develop herbicide-resistant crops. There, I was responsible for the Microbiology area. My job was to characterize diverse mutants in different microorganisms, such as yeasts and bacteria, and I evaluated their resistance to different herbicides. After that, these mutations were introduced in crops using gene editing, as techniques like CRISPR-Cas9.

In general, all these experiences allowed me to have a global vision of research from both private and academic perspectives. Besides that, I have always been interested in the study of antimicrobial resistance and metabolism of pathogenic bacteria in the host. Therefore, I believe this PhD program will allow me to deepen my knowledge in this fascinating topic while also accessing new techniques that are certainly going to perfect my abilities as a researcher.