Manuel ZÚÑiga Cabrera

Biography

Manuel Zúñiga has been a Titular Scientist of the CSIC since 2005 and is integrated in the Laboratory of Lactic Bacteria and Probiotics. He obtained his doctorate in Microbiology at the University of Valencia. The topic of work was the development of methods of genetic manipulation of Oenococcus oeni, a lactic bacterium of oenological interest and for which no manipulation tools were available. In this study the transfer of plasmids and conjugative transposons to this organism was achieved for the first time as well as the development of other methodologies for the microbiological study of the same. From 1995 to 1996 he remained in the laboratory of Dr. Gaspar Pérez Martínez at IATA to address the identification and characterization of the genes involved in the arginine deiminase pathway in Lactobacillus sakei, a work that continued to be funded with a Marie Curie return contract in 2000-2001 in the same laboratory.

Research Interest

He is currently working on the characterization of other systems as well as on the stress response of this organism. M. Zúñiga has continued to participate in studies of intestinal microbiota characterization as well as studies of molecular evolution by phylogenetic methods. He recently started a study in collaboration with Dr. Vicente Monedero of phosphate metabolism in L. casei. This study links the line of work in TCS, as there is evidence of the involvement of at least one TCS in the regulation of phosphate metabolism, with studies on the probiotic properties of L. casei carried out in the laboratory