News & Events

Along this week, a great representation of our group assisted to the UIMP summer school Human and Environmental Microbiome: Science, Entrepreneurship, and Society. Organized together with CSIC’s MicrobiomeHub, this immersive training offered the opportunity not only to learn and get a deeper knowledge on this topic, central to our investigation, but also of making new contacts and expanding our network. Moreover, the impressive location is also a value that makes of this trip to Santander (Spain) one to be remembered. For sure the learnings of this week will bring great improvements to our research.

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The group’s new generation of researchers is making a strong impact. On June 24, Claudia Guerrero successfully defended her Master’s thesis “Bioinformatics Applied to the Global Census of Extremophiles” (supervised by Manuel Ferrer and Rafael Bargiela), earning her Master’s degree in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology (UAM).
Claudia first joined our laboratory in 2023 through the CSIC’s JAE Intro program and returned in 2025 under the MomentumCSIC program, through which she is currently pursuing her doctoral thesis. This Master’s program has been a key component of her training, providing her with a solid foundation in bioinformatics and computational biology to support her doctoral research in metagenomics.

The Spanish Society for Microbiology (SEM) held the 15th Meeting of the Aquatic Microbiology Group (XVMMA) from June 10–12 at the National Museum of Natural Sciences (MNCN-CSIC), in collaboration with Frontiers in Microbiology. Our colleague Rafael Bargiela participated with a talk on how certain microbial communities colonize plastics—specifically in the transitional waters flowing from a treatment plant toward the sea. This conference, which focuses on microbial diversity and biogeography, microbial interactions, and applied aquatic microbiology, brought together nearly 100 participants from 41 institutions for this edition, to connect and share good science.

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And the day came, we have a brand new doctor in the group! Our colleague Paula Vidal, brilliantly defended her work gathered under the title «From enzymes to reprogrammed bacteria using AI and CRISPR for sustainable PET recycling». Along these years of PhD candidate, she has carried out an amazing research with really promising results to help to recover the environment. An outstanding example is GenRewire. And, of course, with Outstanding Cum Laude by unanimous decision. We cannot be prouder of her! We wish her all the best for what may come from now on.

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We are having many incorporations this year! Now is the turn of Sara Auriemma, from the Universitá degli Studi di Milano. Her work along the next six months will focus on how to GenRewire (or reprogramme) bacterial genomes for advanced wastewater treatment. She has been granted with an Erasmus+ Traineeship, within her MSc in Biotechnology for the Bioeconomy studies. We are sure that she will speak a perfect Spanish soon, we hope we can learn some Italian too! Welcome!

This is a day to act. Act for equality, for justice and for recognition. For the present, past, and future generations. Hopefully someday this is just a memory of what we, as society, have achieved. Until then, we will keep on demonstrating how science is done also by women, deserving the same recognition and opportunities as the science made by men, because gender is not relevant in the quality of science, and because women will not be silenced and their work stolen any more! With this spirit, our scientists Claudia, Laura, Paula and Patricia showed students aged 3-12 wonderful science made by women.

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Within Science and Technology Week 2025, our Institute participated once again in this major event with 10 workshops for more than 200 secondary, high school, and FP students. This activity enjoys high participation and involvement from our staff every year, with over 80 collaborators participating, including principal investigators, predoctoral researchers, PhDs, technicians, and more. Our group collaborated in the chemiluminiscence workshop, being scientific cops for one day!

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And the 4th Award Margarita Salas for scientific research and technological development in Life Sciences goes to…: Laura Fernández! Congratulations!!! 😍 🎉 Her doctoral thesis entitled “Expanding the collection of biocatalysts: From natural enzymes to new artificial designs” received this great honor granted by the Madrid City Council. The ceremony took place on the beautiful Cibeles’ Music Box Auditorium, and was conducted by @ladyscienceofficial. You can follow the act here. 

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We are so happy to share that we have participated in the Spanish podcast “Hablando con Científicos” (Talking with Scientists. Cienciaes.com)! Our IP Manuel Ferrer talked with Ángel Rodríguez Lozano about our recently published article “Computationally guided genome rewiring of Escherichia coli and its application for nanopolyethylene terephthalate (PET) biodegradation and upcycling”. This work represents an amazing collaboration among multidisciplinary groups. You can listen to the interview in any of the links in the button below, or read the article itself here.

Links to the podcast

Since you are here, we assume you are interested in microbiome and enzymes, and maybe you are the new talent we are looking for! So if you are beginning your scientific carrer, read this 👀 The European Commission is investing in cutting-edge microbiome research through METAMIC3 (Metaproteome-based leveraged microbiome management in the context of One Health, HorizonEurope project, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions – MSCA), with an open position associated in our group! We offer a MSCA PhD in Microbiome Research Using Multi-Omics and AI to Tackle Antibiotic Resistance in the Context of One Health (HORIZON-MSCA-DN). Click here for more info on how to join us!

This year Biotec‘s congress, on its 19th edition, was hosted by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) in Bellaterra. Prof. Manuel Ferrer and Dr. Fadia Cervantes joined this 4-days event organized by the Spanish Society of Biotechnology (SEBiot). Ferrer contributed with a Key Note and Cervantes with a poster, both showing the work done to achieve a more sustainable world through enzymes, carried out in our laboratory in the frame of different projects, national and european. They could also enjoy many amazing talks, including those of our close collaborators Dr. José Luis González Alfonso and Dr. Marina Minguet-Lobato, seminars and rountables. Another experience to keep filling our backpack of science.

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Some of the FuturEnzyme partners travelled to Brussels, where we met with the Project Officer, Colombe Warin, the external reviewer, Michael Hofer, and the Policy Officers Mafalda Quintas and Maria Albano, in this nice EU building with amazing views! In this hybrid meeting, where other partners joined online, 4 years of work were briefed in one intense day, but it was worth it! Seems like we passed the test 🤗. Thank you to all the FuturEnzyme team and everyone that has made our legacy posible, the scientific, and the personal. But this is not goodbye, still more news will come!

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The Spanish Society of Catalysis (SECAT) celebrated in June its congress, under the theme «New Challenges in Catalysis in the Digital Age.» This event, hosted by the University of Alcalá de Henares (Madrid, Spain) brought together experts in the field to share the latest advances in catalysis. Our colleague Paula Vidal participated with an oral presentation entitled «Novel Biocatalyst for Sustainable Plastic Removal,» in which we showcased an innovative biotechnological approach for the sustainable degradation of plastics. It was an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions on how to contribute to current challenges in sustainability and biocatalysis.

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This project aims at the in silico discovery and design of BIOlogics for REcycling and REusing polymeric materials used for aircraft coatings. Funded by the “César Nombela” Talent Atraction Grants (awarded by the Madrid Regional Government) we started our activities, full of ideas and willing to contribute to a more sustainable world. Don’t miss the website to be updated

This is the marked day for the official end of the first European Project that our group coordintes, FuturEnzyme. All the consortium (academia, SME, industries and clusters) has been working along the last 4 years to accomplish the different tasks, milestones, deliverables, meetings, dissemination and communication activities, management… so many aspects to cover that wouldn’t have been posible without all the partners lending a hand and working on the same direction. So thank you all! Still we need a further push to complete the “final exam”. After all, we are sure this is only a “see you later” ☺️

09 May 1950, the Schuman declaration is proposed, meaning the first step to the formation of the European Union. Then it was called European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and was formed in 1952, serving as a way of seeking peace, collaboration and strength. So that day is celebrated now as the Europe’s Day, and we took the opportunity to show young students the work funded by the EU by the FuturEnzyme and Nymphe projects. This activity took place on 07-09 May 2025 on the Eugenio Trías Library, inside Retiro Park in Madrid. Thank you very much to all the people assisting and the wonderful organization by ICMM (NightMadrid, an MSCActions Project together with madrimasd).

Budapest (Hungary) has been this year’s host of Novel Enzymes. Organized by HUN-REN Research Centre for Natural Sciencies, this symposium gathered worldwide experts on enzymes to show the scientific community the latest advances and innovations on biocatalysts. Our IP Prof. Manuel Ferrer (CSIC) was there talking about the developed discoverings within our group, accompanied by Jog Raj, a member of the Advisory Board of our Project FuturEnzyme from PatentCo.

Our new member, Claudia Guerrero, assisted to the I Encuentro Momentum CSIC, hosted by CFTMAT. Momentum’s aim is to promote a new generation of professionals with advanced digital skills that will develop their carrers in the Spanish science and innovation ecosystem, and intents to attract, train and retain highly qualified talent in strategic areas of science and technology, contributing to the social and economic progress of society. In this event, she met colleagues, learned more about the program, and talked about her motivations and project. Bravo Claudia!

Is it posible to modify a pore particle enzyme in such a way that has the ability to degrade microplastics? Yes, it is! How this can be accomplished was explained by our IP, Prof. Manuel Ferrer (CSIC) in the prestigious Fundación Ramón Areces (Madrid, Spain), with the collaboration of SEBBM. After the welcome by José María Medina (vicepresident of the Scientific Council of FRA), and Antonio Ferrer Montiel (SEBBM’s president), our collaborator Dr. Sara García Linares nicely introduced Prof. Ferrer. The talk was also streamed online and the talk can be watched through this link.

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This double FuturEnzyme’s meeting session took place on , and was hosted by Henkel in Düsseldorf. Industry meetings are led by CLIB, and for this in person meetings many project partners (CSIC, IST-ID, UHAM, UDUS, FHNW, Evonik, BSC, Biosynth, BioC-CheM) gathered together, while others connected online and were not as lucky as to enjoy the German food and beer. In a productive exchange, we were able to agree on key action points for the remainder of the project, and also learn of the laundry laboratories at Henkel, which made the impact of the research results easier to understand and more tangible for everyone involved. The meeting was rounded off with an evening out at the Düsseldorf Christmas market.

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Our IP Manuel Ferrer and Jog Raj (PatentCo), a member of our project FuturEnzyme‘s Advisory Board, travelled to India in the frame of a collaboration with HTBS (Hi Tech BioSciences India represented by Raghavendra Gaikaiwari) and PatentCo&agromed. These days together have been very productive, not only to strengthen our collaboration, but also to steep in India’s gastronomy and culture!

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One more year here comes the Science Week! ICP-CSIC welcomes students to show them some science. This year, we have prepared quimioluminiscence reactions and explained their applications. For instance, we saw how luminol can shine in the presence of iron compounds which act as catalysts, and applied it to a «real» case of murder, where the students helped us to unmask the assassin. We were CSI for one day! We also showed them the science behind glowing sticks. We want to thank the Applied Biocatalysis group at ICP-CSIC the really nice work done to prepare this activity. We hope the students enjoyed, for sure we did!

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We are constantly making decisions: What do I have for breakfast? Or, What do I wear today? And many of them imply buying products that can have different impact not only in their purpose, but also for the environment. As consumers, we need to be informed to choose more consciously. In this webinar, we learned about enzymes, present in around 10% of the products we consume, and how they improve and green them. Talks from our FuturEnzyme project coordinator, Advisory Board, and industrial partners, shed light on different aspects of the matter. If you didn’t connect and are interested in helping us to undertand better the consumer choices, follow the QR on the up-right image to fill the survey, your feedback is invaluable to us!

We participated in the second PosterCat organized by our institute, ICP-CSIC. Fadia has presented her work on the Nymphe project. Along the poster session, we have exchanged ideas with colleagues, helped by some coffee and snacks! This second edition reinforces the success of this ICP’s initiave to create bonds amongst its members.

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Our PhD student, Paula Vidal, will be at Prof. Wolfgang Streit’s lab at the University oh Hamburg (UHAM) for three months(September-November 2024) learning new techniques. This collaboration between FuturEnzyme‘s partners strenghtens the project’s bonds and connections for a better outcome. Thank you to UHAM’s team for taking her, we already miss her!

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The Aquarium of the beautiful spanish city of San Sebastian-Donosti held the IV JEB (Spanish Congress of Biocatalysis, Jornadas Españolas de Biocatálisis). Our group was represented by Dr. Laura Fernandez-Lopez with an oral communication, and Dr. Fadia Cervantes with a poster. This Congress was organized by SEBiot – Sociedad Española de Biotecnología and CIC biomaGUNE, and served as a really nice place to broaden our networking and as an opportunity to learn more on the future of biocatalysis.

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FuturEnzyme’s academic partners CSIC and IST-ID visited the industrial partner Schoeller. We run some synergistic experiments and we saw their amazing facilities, located in Switzerland. We learnt a lot about the process of making intelligent and conscious textiles!

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We are having intense weeks! Last week, the partners from our EU HE Nymphe project were convened to expose our most recent results and advances. This meeting was organized in the frame of the 7th International Symposium on Biosorption and Biodegradation/Bioremediation (BioBio 2024), and also included the EU Bioremediation Project Cluster. Prague was the place chosen for this multi-event, which is an example of commitment to not loose face-to-face contact while reducing CO2 emissions

Our project FuturEnzyme clustered from the beginning with the other 3 projects in the same EU call. A proof of this beneficious union is our participation in ESOF2024, under the title “Biochemistry for a greener world: how enzymes can transform the chemical industry and help create sustainable consumer products”. Accompanied by Dr. Manfred Kircher to add his expertise in bio-economy to our vision, we had a really nice intervention, and stablished some interesting conversations with people in the audience, such as stakeholders, policy-makers, or academic. Besides, it was a really good opportunity to see each other face-to-face. We plan to keep on working to sum up efforts, keep posted!

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On 28th May 2024, the University of Düsseldorf (Heinrich-Heine-Universitaet, Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany) organized a symposium in honor of Prof. Dr. Karl-Erich Jaeger. He is one of the essential members of FuturEnzyme’s consortium, with more than 40 years of experience in the world of microbial and enzymatic technologies. His retirement is a well deserved step, but we will miss him!

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Along this month, we will have onboard to Hairong Ma, PhD student from Peter Golyshing’s group (School of Natural Sciences, Bangor University, UK). She will be with us to carry out some experiments that serve as work to her excellent PhD. We hope she enjoys her stay here, and the nice weather too!

The FuturEnzyme project has released an animated video to show how enzymes can help to improve daily use products while taking care of the environment. Since our endeavour always has in mind fighting climate change and pollution, promoting bioeconomy and circular economy, we work to discover awesome enzymes that can be a part of our lifestyle. For instance, being a part of the textile manufacturing processing, as ingredient in laundry detergents, and the bioprocessing of skin care products. Their use highly reduces the amount of water, energy, CO2 emissions and chemicals needed in these and many more industrial processes.

We are in the middle of the FuturEnzyme’s project already! Two years working together to help fight climate change and to move towards bioeconomy and circular economy by enzymatic applications. The 16 partners that integrate FuturEnzyme met in the house of UHAM members, the Institute of Plant Science and Microbiology (IPM, Hamburg, Germany), next to an impressive Botanical Garden. We also counted with the presence of members of our Advisory Board to receive their advice and comments to keep improving our work. In this ocassion almost all the participants assisted in person, but it was also followed in streaming by those who couldn’t travel.

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Our team has participated in this annual advanced training course. It is meant for PhD students and postdocs, with research projects in the fields of biotechnology, biochemistry, molecular biology, biochemical engineering, and bioinformatics. Prof. Manuel Ferrer imparted a lecture and our colleagues Paula Vidal, Cristina Coscolín and Laura Fernández presented a poster. This year’s edition has been organised by the amazing team of our partner from UHAM in FuturEnzyme, Prof. Wolfgang Streit. ESSIB is full of activities: lectures, practical courses, excursions, poster sessions, and social gatherings to give all the participants the opportunity to learn and discuss, and of course to widen their networking.

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Responsible Research & Innovation (RRI) principles are a must in all current and future investigations. To be sure that we squeeze at the maximum our results, we have to be sure that we are working in the right direction and in line with the best practices. Key is to never lose sight of the real demanded needs for society and environment. With these priorities in mind, we set up a interactive online workshop in which to deepen in RRI and apply its principles to practical examples. Experts in the matter were involved and leading different groups, which worked together to share personal views and examples. Different aspects were covered in the frame of RRI principles. We want to thank the experts, Babette Regierer, Petar Vrgovic, Silvia Gallego and Luisa Crisigiovanni, and all the participants; we enjoyed a nice discussion, different views and experiences, and a really enriching time!

You are in the lab one day, as any other, and then…

• Boss, they called to invite you to an act in the Royal Palace with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan
•  Is this a joke?
• If it is, they pranked us

After a while:

• I called back, it is true!

And so, our group leader, assisted to this act of the Aqaba Process meeting! He represented the
research sector with relations with Jordan. Quite an experience!

In this theoretical and hands-on course organized by our project FuturEnzyme and project OxiPro, our members have learned how to take advantage of the potential that computational tools have in the discovery and development of disruptive enzymes. This collaborative workshop between the projects from the Cluster Enzymes for Greener Products has also provided a perfect space for meeting colleagues.

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When your mission is to be a BioHero, you need this serious game! AllThings.Bio has created an app with quizzes, tasks, mini-citybuilders-games, lexicon, and more to become an ecogenius. Follow the QR code in the image and help us fight climate change!

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This year’s edition of Novel Enzymes took place is Greifswald, Germany. This city has a long university tradition, which makes it a priviledged location to meet colleagues and experts in the field of enzymes. Although getting there was a long journey and the city received Paula and Laura with snow, they enjoyed the congress and come back full of anecdotes and new ideas.

Four EU-funded sibling projects: EnXylaScope, FuturEnzyme, OXIPRO and RadicalZ, have just launched this policy brief to provide scientific insight to support and inform EC policy areas, including the European Green Deal and Bioeconomy strategies.

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In a face to face evaluation in Brussels, the FuturEnzyme’s first reporting meeting was held. All work package leaders met with the Project Officer, Colombe Warin, and and expert in the field, Martin Rebros. The team exposed the work carried out by FuturEnzyme in the first 18 months of the Project. We received really valuable feedback and recommendations to keep improving our activities. Now…let’s go for the next period!

Nymphe is a Horizon Europe project, dedicated to the bioremediation of polluted environments, using matrices taken from four contminated sites. The host of the kick-off meeting was the coordinator of the project, The University of Bologna. The consortium is conformed of 18 expert partners from 12 countries, which took the opportunity to learn more about each other and organize the thrilling activities ahead.

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In November we celebrate the Science Week, a time to show to the general public the power of our work. In our Institute (ICP-CSIC), every year we invite highschool students (around 200 this year) that learn about science in their every day lives. Our group participated in the “Enzymatic elimination of lactose” workshop, where they learnt how milk without lactose is prepared, and even to do it theirselves just with what they can find in a supermarket! #semanacienciaCSIC.

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The Francisco de Vitoria University (Madrid) has dedicated a lesson to our awesomenzymes one more year. Lectured by our colleague Cristina Coscolín, Biotechnology students learned about metagenomics and how it triggers enzyme discovery for real implementations in biotechnology.

The International BioSC Symposium took place in person in Bonn, Germany. With focus on an Integrated Bioeconomy, this event counted with Manuel Ferrer’s talk entitled “Bioeconomy and climate change mitigation: new enzymes wanted”.
Within the section “High-value compounds from integrated processes”, he explained how we can squeeze the best of the enzymes’ potential for greener consumers’ products.

Entitled “Structural basis of substrate specificity in native and protein/supramolecular engineered ester-hydrolases”, Isabel Cea Rama explained the impressive work carried out along her predoctoral period, under the direction of Dr. Julia Sanz (IQFR-CSIC) and Prof. Manuel Ferrer. Congratulations, doc!

After one year of online meetings, seeing each other behind masks, finally we met in person! For this 12-month General Assembly meeting, we gathered together in Madrid, but we have simultaneously carried out the meeting online for those who could’t travel. Known faces for some of us, new faces for others, but a nice and productive union for us all! Read more

In the frame of the Community of Madrid program “4ºESO+company”,  we took in 5 students from the IES José Luis Sampedro (Tres Cantos, Madrid, Spain) to show them how the work in the lab is. They learned basic techniques that we use to discover, develop and characterise enzymes to be employed to better our lives and the environment. Natalia, Marta, Laura, Celia and Alejandra, it was such a pleasure to have you these days with us!

A metapredictor to fulfil the enzymatic industry requirements. Find out more here.

The infinite opportunities of enzymes was the topic of this CLIB (our partner in the project FuturEnzyme) forum event. INOFEA (also a FuturEnzyme’s partner) intervened to show their impressive shielding technology. More cutting-edge technologies in enzyme modification and optimisation were the central issues, together with discussion about the opportunities of this powerful multitool of biotechnology.

Cristina Coscolín gave an invited seminar to Biotechnology students from the Francisco de Vitoria University (Madrid, Spain), by the title “Metagenomics: a useful tool for the discovery of new enzymes with biotechnological applications”. She showed how our group is involved in greening the world through enzymes.

Our Coordinator, Manuel Ferrer, talks to teenagers about “Nano for the Environment” (Madre de Dios school, Madrid, Spain) in the context of a Nanoscience and Nanotechnology festival. This act was held on-line.