School of Infection & Immunity

Alejandra Diaz de Aguinaga

Title: From SynComs to Soll: Understanding Streptomyces in a Community Context

Synopsis: 

Streptomyces are a genus of bacteria ubiquitous in soil. The complex secondary metabolism of this genus has given us a large range of compounds with pharmaceutical and biotechnological applications, such as antitumoral drugs and antibiotics. With the rising AMR wave it is crucial to discover new classes of antibiotics effective against multiresistant life-threatening bacteria. The machinery required for the production of these compounds is encoded on biosynthetic gene clusters (BGCs), however, their expression remains silent under standard laboratory culturing conditions. This research aims to find inducers to silent biosynthetic gene clusters on Streptomyces by simulating those interactions naturally occurring in soil.

Bio:

Alejandra Díaz de Aguinaga is a second-year PhD student in the Fernández-Martínez Lab in the bacteriology department at the Sii. She graduated in a Microbiology BSc (Hons) degree at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2022. She has graduated from a Bioinformatics and Biostatistics MSc at University of Barcelona, which increased her interest on exploring microbiomes diversity and function using multiOmics analysis. During her PhD research she focuses on identifying inducers to silent BGCs on Streptomyces by simulating natural soil conditions. Her research also involves understanding the impact and role of Streptomyces in soil using metagenomics data.  

First published: 19 August 2025

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