Science in motion: my secondment in Bilbao

Ana Rita Franco

Early Stage Researcher 6, University of Milano Bicocca

In November 2021 I travelled to Bilbao to complete my first planned secondment of the PhD. My destination was CIC bioGUNE, a key European research centre that combines expertise from different areas like Chemistry, Molecular Biology, Cell biology and Structural biology. One of the main goals of the groups is to help shape the precision medicine landscape for the future. How do they do it? Essentially, starting from the most fundamental aspects of a disease, such as the discovery of new targets or new biomarkers, until the practical and “real world” aspects like, for example, the development of new diagnostic tools. To achieve this, the centre established collaborations with multiple institutions, national and international, and is also a key facility in the training of new researchers.

The CIC bioGUNE building located in the Science and Technology Park of Bizkaia, Bilbao.

During my two-month stay, I had the opportunity to be a part of two different research groups: Prof. Juan Anguita’s lab – the Inflammation and Macrophage Plasticity lab – and Prof. Jesús Jiménez-Barbero’s lab – the Chemical Glycobiology lab.

In the Inflammation and Macrophage Plasticity lab, I had the opportunity to work with Samuel Pasco, also an early stage researcher (ESR) with BactiVax, in the development of a collaboration project that involved in vivo testing of the molecules developed in Milano. Although I was not directly involved with the tests itself, only with the subsequent analysis of the samples, I could realise that the animal facility provides very important data not only to the BactiVax network but to CIC bioGUNE groups and many collaborators of Prof. Anguita. Not only was this work important for the progress of my PhD but also, I was able to take home some new tips that will help me to optimise my experiments back in Milano.

In the Chemical Glycobiology lab, I worked alongside BactiVax ESR Unai Atxabal. From the start I knew that this research group was focused on many techniques I didn’t master such as NMR, protein production and purification, X-ray crystallography, molecular dynamics, among others, and thus I was in for a challenge. I was able to learn how to perform or at least help to perform most of the techniques and had a lot of fun doing so. From all the techniques employed by the group to study glycans and their interactions, I would say that NMR takes a central stage. NMR stands for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, and it is very useful because using a very small amount of sugar -the ligand- and protein -the receptor-, it is possible to determine not only the structure of both of them but also how they interact with each other. With the help of Unai, I was able to lose the fear of breaking a very expensive instrument and perform NMR experiments by myself which was something that I never done before.

The 800 MHz NMR located in the NMR facility of CICbioGUNE.

One of the most curious things about this group was finding out that they produced their own proteins by engineering different types of cells and isolating the desired proteins using optimized purifications methods. Furthermore, it was also  fascinating to see that one of the strategies they employ to synthesize new carbohydrate molecules is the use of an automatic oligosaccharide synthesizer, which I had never seen live before.

Additionally, I was also able to have access to instruments outside of the group. One of the things I enjoyed the most was to perform cryo-electron microscopy experiments with the help of PhD student Juan Diego Zalamea. I was able to see and learn the whole process from preparing the sample until observing it under the microscope. This approach allowed us to obtain images of our compounds which is truly fascinating because we get to see with our own eyes the compounds that we’ve been working with for so long.

Now, at the end of this experience, I can say that I really enjoyed my time in CIC bioGUNE, not only from a scientific point of view, since I was able to enrich my baggage of techniques and knowledge, but also from a personal point of view. Everyone welcomed me very well, from the supervisors to my fellow PhD students and I made friends and memories that will for sure last forever.

 

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Congratulations to #BactiVax researchers @irenejm6, @maite_s96 and Assoc. Prof. Siobhán McClean on their recently published review on Pseudomonas aeruginosa #vaccine development! 🦠 P. aeruginosa is an antibiotic-resistant, hospital-acquired pathogen that can cause severe and difficult to treat infections. Link to open access paper here & in bio: https://t.co/l1y9Ugh5Sj?amp=1
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