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Staff member

Irene Marco Rius

Molecular Imaging for Precision Medicine
+34 9340 ext 21750
CV Summary
Her research develops tools based on magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) and imaging (MRI) to gain insights on cellular metabolism and detect pathological changes, in order to identity biomarkers of disease for an early diagnosis and to evaluate treatment response short after therapy administration. Particularly, she has experience in the use of hyperpolarisation by dynamic nuclear polarisation to study disease in vivo, in real time and non-invasively.
Irene's team has currently three main research lines:

· Biomarker discovery in in vivo and in vitro models of diseases.
· MRS hardware and software development to monitor disease and evaluate drug response in situ, in organ-on-chip models.
· Metabolomic studies of clinical samples and body fluids ex-vivo.

She is a strong advocate of fostering scientific careers and the importance of science communication. She takes an active role in teaching and mentoring younger scientist from school age to PhD students, delivering talks on career development and talking to the public about her work.
Staff member publications

Trueba-Santiso, A., Fernández-Verdejo, D., Marco Rius, I., Soder-Walz, J. M., Casabella, O., Vicent, T., Marco-Urrea, E., (2020). Interspecies interaction and effect of co-contaminants in an anaerobic dichloromethane-degrading culture Chemosphere 240, 124877

An anaerobic stable mixed culture dominated by bacteria belonging to the genera Dehalobacterium, Acetobacterium, Desulfovibrio, and Wolinella was used as a model to study the microbial interactions during DCM degradation. Physiological studies indicated that DCM was degraded in this mixed culture at least in a three-step process: i) fermentation of DCM to acetate and formate, ii) formate oxidation to CO2 and H2, and iii) H2/CO2 reductive acetogenesis. The 16S rRNA gene sequencing of cultures enriched with formate or H2 showed that Desulfovibrio was the dominant population followed by Acetobacterium, but sequences representing Dehalobacterium were only present in cultures amended with DCM. Nuclear magnetic resonance analyses confirmed that acetate produced from 13C-labelled DCM was marked at the methyl ([2–13C]acetate), carboxyl ([1–13C]acetate), and both ([1,2–13C]acetate) positions, which is in accordance to acetate formed by both direct DCM fermentation and H2/CO2 acetogenesis. The inhibitory effect of ten different co-contaminants frequently detected in groundwaters on DCM degradation was also investigated. Complete inhibition of DCM degradation was observed when chloroform, perfluorooctanesulfonic acid, and diuron were added at 838, 400, and 107 μM, respectively. However, the inhibited cultures recovered the DCM degradation capability when transferred to fresh medium without co-contaminants. Findings derived from this work are of significant relevance to provide a better understanding of the synergistic interactions among bacteria to accomplish DCM degradation as well as to predict the effect of co-contaminants during anaerobic DCM bioremediation in groundwater. © 2019 Elsevier Ltd

JTD Keywords: Bioremediation, Co-contaminants, Dehalobacterium, Dichloromethane, Inhibition