Rocío Coloma

Rocío Coloma began her scientific career at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid in Biology Degree. Once she finished the first part of the degree she moved to Biochemistry Degree. At the end of this bachelor's degree she had the opportunity to validate some subjects to finish Biology Degree originally started. In 2003 she earned both degrees. The final year research project was carried out in the laboratory of Dr. Juan Ortín at the National Centre for Biotechnology, achieving the maximal qualifications. The project consisted in the generation of a monocistronic version of the influenza virus polymerase complex by fusion of the coding regions of the 3 subunits and its expression in mammalian cells. In 2004 she joined to the group of Dr. Juan Ortín at the National Centre for Biotechnology, with a FPI scholarship. During her PhD Thesis she studied the functional and structural aspects of Recombinant Ribonucleoprotein of Influenza virus, under the supervision of Dr. Juan Ortín and Dr. Jaime Martin-Benito. In 2009 she obtained her PhD in Molecular Biology from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She continued until 2013 in the group of Dr. Juan Ortín as postdoctoral fellow carrying out structural and functional analysis of Native Influenza Virus Ribonucleoproteins. In 2014 she moved to the group of Dr. Jaime Martin-Benito, at the National Centre for Biotechnology, to continue with the functional and structural studies on the machinery of replication and transcription of influenza virus. Throughout this period the collaboration of Dr. Juan Ortín and Dr. Jaime Martin-Benito´s groups and the combination of Molecular Biology and structure of macromolecular complexes, have resulted in different structural studies on ribonucleoproteins of Influenza Virus, both recombinant and native, and a new model for replication and transcription for Influenza Virus, both with very high impact in the field (with more than 600 citations). In this period 5 papers have been published, a collaboration in which was performance the functional studies (Guilligay et al., 2008), two co-authorships (Arranz et al, 2012; Jorba, Coloma, & Ortin, 2009), one as first author (Coloma et al., 2009) and one review (Resa-Infante, Jorba, Coloma & Ortin, 2011). Then Rocio has taken a period of low professional activity to be a mother and take care of her children. After that she came back to the group of Dr. Jaime Martin-Benito. She has been responsible for leading a PhD student and to carrying out an ambitious project on the mechanism of influenza virus RNA synthesis. This project has resulted in a paper which is a milestone in the field (Coloma et al, 2020). In 2020, during the global pandemic, she has working in the fight against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, developing a colorimetric sensor to easily detect the viral RNA, with Dr. Alvaro Somoza at IMDEA Nanociencia. This project has resulted in 3 papers (López-Valls M et al, 2022, Del Caño R et al, 2022 and Rodriguez Diaz C. et al, 2022). She then moved to Dr. Susana Guerra's laboratory to continue the fight against coronavirus and other viruses, participating in the development of a vaccine based on MVA (Bécares M et al, 2023 and Falqui M et al, 2023).