Oihane DIAZ DE CERIO

Since I finished my PhD in 2012 I have been working as postDoc. in the Department of Zoology and Animal Cell Biology of the UPV/EHU.A year later I was granted by the Basque Government PostDoc Research Fellows (2014) and I came to the University of Exeter to work with Prof. Charles R. Tyler in the study of agonist/antagonist of teleost nuclear receptors. This work aims to elucidate how pollutants manage to activate biotransformation, a detoxification process;the goal is to decipher how chemical substances bind/activate nuclear receptors such as, PXR, PPAR, and RXR, and activate target genes transcription.

For this purpose, in vitro assays have been developed. During my International PhD, I gained the experience in molecular biology and new sequencing technologies. I studied the transcriptomic responses in different organisms such as, thicklip grey mullet, eels and blue mussels. To perform sequencing of this last, I was granted by the Spanish Ministry which allowed me to stay in Glasgow Caledonian University under the supervision of Prof. John Craft. In general my thesis was possible thanks to the grant provided by UPV/EHU in 2007 (PIFG025/2007/001).

In my PhD period I have worked on European projects PRAGMA EU project (07.030900/2005/429172/SUB/A5), as well as in Basque Government projects such as SAIOTEK (S-PE09UN32, S-PC08UN03, S-PR06UN02), ETORTEK(REF: S-PR07UN01) and special actions (AE-2008-1-1);and Spanish Ministry funded CANCERMAR (CTM- 2006-06192) and SEXOVUM (AGL2012-33477). Due to project requests, I have been as visitor working in the «Centro de InvestigacionesOncológicas (CNIO)”, in the National Institute of Bioinformatics (INB, Madrid) in 2009;and in the University of Cambridge (UK, 2010) under the supervision of Prof. Jules Griffin. Same year of starting my PhD, I finished my Master degree of “contaminacion y toxicologiaambiental”. Previously, I expend 4 moths working on a lab in the Stokcholm University (Stockholm Universitet) under the supervision of Dra. Susana Cristóbal. During this period I was working on proteomic studies to study the Prestige oil spill effect in mussel digestive glands. This stay in 2006 was able thanks to the Guest Scholarship of the Swedish Institute. As a result of my carrier, I have obtained a general view of effects of pollutants on proteome, genome and cellular level as well as the critical view and scientific experience. Apart from the 9 JRC articles and more than 40 national and international congress presentations, the most remarkable result of my PhDhas been the molecular gender identification in teleost gonad tissue by 5S rRNA. This work opened a new investigation line with a high range of applications, from basic research to aquaculture purposes that has been continued in the Laboratory of Histology and Animal Cell biology of the UPV/EHU through the PhD thesis of IratxeRojo.