Researcher of the CIB Center is recognized by his studies on microbiome

14-12-2021

Dr. Gregorio Iraola, Assistant Professor of the Integrative Biology Center (CIB) U. Mayor, received the Talent Awards 2021 awarded by the Pasteur Institute in recognition of his work on the network that brings together 31 international centers for biomedical research.

The Uruguayan scientist, Gregorio Iraola, received the Talent Awards, an annual distinction granted by the Pasteur Institute to two young scientists from the Pasteur Institutes Network of the World.

The jury distinguished the scientist for "his talent of him to integrate bioinformatics into experimental science projects" and stressed him that his Latinbiota project "can extend to the centers of the southern hemisphere of the Pasteur Red".

Latinbiota, is an international consortium, coordinated by Dr. Iraola, whose objective is to understand the microbioma of Latin America and how to use this information to improve the health of its population.

Dr. Gregorio Iraola is Director of the Microbial Genomics Laboratory of the Pasteur Institute of Montevideo and develops bioinformatic methods to study the microbial world. In addition, he leads other large-scale projects such as Metasub, which studies the microbiome of urban environments around the world, and is responsible for a genomic, epidemiological study and evolutionary dynamics of Clostridium difficile, a bacterium that causes severe diarrhea.

The recognition was awarded virtually at the end of the meeting number 53 of the different Pasteur Institutes that make up the organization created in Paris.

The scientist thanked the prize as "a personal recognition that is based on a great team of people with whom I have the pleasure of working"

Recently, Dr. Iraola has applied the knowledge and skills of him to the fight against the Covid-19 pandemic leading the efforts in Uruguay to carry out the genomic surveillance of SARS-COV-2 and its variants using advanced sequencing technologies.

The academic is part of the CIB U. Senior since 2018 and has been involved in projects that seek to establish functional associations between human microbiome and pathologies associated with the nervous system, including Alzheimer's and sleep disorders.

Also, together with CIB he is exploring microbiomas of different regions of Chile to discover the diversity of bacterial communities in people who live in remote places of our country.