2008/02/12

Aitor Hierro joins CIC bioGUNE's Structural Biology Unit

Researcher Aitor Hierro has joined CIC bioGUNE's Structural Biology Unit, where he is continuing his work on protein trafficking. The philosophy of the research group which he is leading is to accomplish current biological questions through different perspectives and establishment of close collaborations with other disciplines.

After graduating, Aitor Hierro went on to study for his doctorate in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department of the University of the Basque Country, supervised by Professors Arturo Muga and Adelina Prado. His research work centred on defining the relationship between the structure and functioning of the chaperon Nucleoplasmin. He was awarded his doctorate with the highest honours in 2002, and went on to work within Dr. James H. Hurley's group at the U.S. National Institute of Health.

His work focuses on projects researching large multi-protein complexes involved in cell trafficking, in two main areas: (1) Developing new procedures for the expression and screening of protein complexes already successfully adopted by other researchers and (2) Through a combined approach, studying large multi-protein complexes with special weight in Structural Biology using X-Ray Crystallography.