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- Biografia
I graduated in Biochemistry in 2004 and obtained my PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2009 from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Just after receiving my PhD, I started my postdoctoral research at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF). In 2011, I was awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship to continue my research at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. In 2013, I was recognized with the Young Investigator Award from the American Association for Microbiology. I returned back to Spain in 2014 as a Ramon y Cajal Fellow at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, UAB.
I am interested in understanding how pathogenic bacteria interact with host cells and how the innate immune system reacts to infection. We use a multidisciplinary approach including systems biology, biophysics and computational biology to uncover the host-pathogen interactome with the aim to design new therapeutic avenues against infections. The aim of my research is to discover new antimicrobials, with special emphasis in fighting multi-drug resistant pathogens.
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- Grups de recerca
- Systems Biology of Infection Lab
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- Projectes
"New efflux pump inhibitors to overcome antimicrobial resistance"
Periplasmic chaperones prevent aggregation of outer membrane proteins (OMPs) which are essential for bacteria to infect the host. There are three periplasmatic chaperones widely distributed in Gram-negative bacteria that have a multimeric structure: Skp, FkpA and Spy. Multiple evidences in the literature show that these chaperones are involved in infection and its deletion promotes a decrease in infectivity. These chaperones help bacteria to survive various stresses such as fever and are associated to virulence factors. Moreover, deletion of periplasmatic chaperones also increases susceptibility to certain antibiotics. Their multimeric structure is fundamental to perform its function.
In this project we validated 3 peptide candidates to inhibit the multimerization of bacterial periplasmatic chaperones both in model strains and clinical isolates of drug-resistant strains.
This project has been co-funded by the European Union through the Fons Europeu de Desenvolupament Regional (FEDER) and has the support of the Secretaria d’Universitats i Recerca del Departament d’Empresa i Coneixement de la Generalitat de Catalunya
  
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- Publicacions
- Marc Torrent*, Guilhem Chalancon, Natalia S. de Groot, Madan Babu: Cells alter their tRNA abundance to selectively regulate protein expression during stress conditions (2018) Science Signalling 11: eaat6409.Editor's pick for Focus on Stress Response by Sebastian Peichmann. Featured in UAB News.
- David Pulido, Rocío Rebollido-Rios, Javier Valle, David Andreu, Ester Boix, Marc Torrent*: Structural similarities in the CPC clip motif explain peptide-binding promiscuity between glycosaminoglycans and lipopolysaccharides (2017) Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 14: 20170423.
- Núria Crua, Natalia S. de Groot, Marc Torrent*: Centrality in the host-pathogen interactome is associated with pathogen fitness during infection (2017) Nature Communications, 8: 14092. Editor’s pick for Nature Communications Collection Complexity in Research: Network medicine.
- Natalia S. de Groot, Marc Torrent: Is membrane homeostasis the missing link between inflammation and neurodegenerative diseases? (2015) Cellular and Molecular Life Sciences 72(24):4795-4805.
- Marc Torrent, David Pulido, M Victòria Nogués, Ester Boix: Exploring new biological functions of amyloids: bacteria cell agglutination mediated by host protein aggregation (2012) PLoS Pathogens 8(11):e1003005. Highlighted in F1000 prime.
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- Altres informacions
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A-5171-2010 |
Research Gate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Marc_Torrent
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