Dr. Enrique Gonzalez Tortuero

School of Science, Engineering and Environment

Photo of Dr. Enrique Gonzalez Tortuero

Current positions

Postdoctoral researcher

Biography

I finished my undergraduate degree at the University of Alcala, Spain, in 2010, where I started interesting on the impact of symbionts in the host’s evolution, mainly focused on Wolbachia. After performing my MSc in Evolutionary Biology at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, in 2011, I was awarded a training grant to learn Bioinformatics applied to Microbiology and Biochemistry at the Spanish Astrobiology Center - National Institute for Aerospace Technology from 2011 to 2012. Then, I performed my PhD studies at the Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich and the Leibniz-Institute for Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries (Berlin, Germany) from 2013 to 2016 in the spatial and temporal dynamics of parasite populations of Daphnia water fleas, with special emphasis on Caullerya mesnili. After the defence, I started getting more interested in virology and the microbial world during my first postdoc in the University College Cork (2016-2018), where I was working in the phage diversity of cystic fibrosis patients and I assisted in the crAss-phage taxonomy. After that, I was in two other more postdoctoral positions, one in the University of Maryland Baltimore, USA (2018-2019), and another in the University of Copenhagen, Denmark (2019-2020). In the last one, I was involved in a project on the impact of ncRNAs in the system biology of Bacillus subtilis for biotechnological purposes. I moved to Salford in 2020 to work as a postdoctoral researcher under Chloe James’ lab.

Research Interests

My main research interests are those concerning the evolution of symbiotic interactions sensu lato (i.e. from mutualism to parasitism) and its impact in the evolution of their hosts. I consider that this idea is not only applicable to the species level—especially in the evolution of eukaryotic organisms—but also to the genome level if mobile elements and viruses are considered as parasites. In a practical sense, I am focused on the molecular interactions between virus and cellular host (which allows to identify potential antiviral targets and resistance mechanisms).

Qualifications and Memberships

BSc in Biology by the University of Alcala, Spain

MSc in Evolutionary Biology by the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain

PhD in Biology (Dr Rer Natur) by the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany

Member of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology

Member of the Microbiology Society

Subject: Evolutionary Biology, Microbiology, Bioinformatics