I have always been fascinated by the emergent properties of multicellular systems (i.e. why the whole is greater than the sum of its parts) and thus decided to do research in Developmental Biology once I obtained my Biochemistry major in Zaragoza (Spain).

In early 2011 I received my PhD from Autonomous University of Madrid (Spain) for my work in the group of Dr. Miguel Torres, where we showed that cell-autonomous and nonautonomous mechanisms interact during vertebrate limb patterning.

In June 2012, I became a postdoctoral fellow in the Joyner laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, USA), where I developed mouse genetic models of unilateral insults, to study regulation of limb growth. These models led to the discovery that both local and systemic mechanisms contribute to the response to developmental insults.

In 2017 I was appointed Junior Group Leader at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute in Melbourne, Australia. Starting May 2018, we will study the short- and long-range communication mechanisms that regulate growth within and between organs, with a focus on vertebrate limb development and regeneration.

As outlined above, I’m most likely to post about studies of growth control, not only dealing with the vertebrate limb, but also with other organs/organisms. I will especially focus on studies that explore both organ-autonomous mechanisms and nonautonomous ones.