CSIC, Estación Experimental del Zaidín

The laboratory leaded by Dr. Silvia Marqués in the EMB (EEZ-CSIC) has more than 20-year experience working on the characterization of natural communities using molecular tools, and on the isolation of bacterial strain with novel and valuable metabolic traits. The group isolated the new bacterial strain STN1A for its capacity to produce bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) from naphthalene under microaerophilic conditions, which later showed to be able to massively overproduce this value-added polymer from different types of waste, including carbon dioxide. The strain and process have been deposited for intellectual property protection purposes (patent pending). The group belongs to the Estación Experimental del Zaidín (EEZ-CSIC) in Granada (www.eez.csic.es), part of the CSIC, the largest public research organization in Spain and the 7th at a global scale. The EEZ is a leading Institute in Europe in advanced agricultural and environmental technologies, with special emphasis on the development of bacterial strains and large-scale operations for environment cleanup. The EEZ is the best equipped Institution for research in Environmental Sciences in Andalucía. The Environmental Microbiology and Biotechnology (EMB) group at the EEZ-CSIC is devoted to fight against environmental pollution using biological tools. The experimental approach includes the isolation of new natural strain with novel metabolic capacities, the molecular and biochemical analysis of pathways, with emphasis on gene regulation, reactor experiments, and bacterial resistance to toxics.