2025 - MOLECULAR BIOSYSTEMS CONFERENCE

Molecular Biosystems Conference - 2025

September 29 - October 3, 2025.
Cabaña del Lago Hotel,
Puerto Varas, Chile.

Abridged Program

Molecular Biosystems Conference 2025.

Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Caroline Dean (John Innes Centre, UK)

The EMBO Keynote Lecture
Molecular Biosystems Award Honoree [See Video Recording here]

Research in the Dean lab focuses on how the environment influences the timing of flowering in plants, with an emphasis on the study of the interplay of chromatin, transcription, and non-coding RNAs in the process.

Michael Elowitz (California Institute of Technology & HHMI, USA)

IUBMB Jubilee Award Lecture [See Video Recording here]

The Elowitz lab seeks to understand the design principles that allow molecular and cellular circuits to operate effectively, and to apply that understanding to predict and control natural cellular behaviors and design synthetic circuits that can provide interesting and useful new cellular capabilities.

Guest Speakers

Susan L. Ackerman (University of California, San Diego & HHMI, USA)

The goal of the Ackerman laboratory is to define the molecular pathways necessary to maintain homeostasis in both the developing and aging nervous system.

Isabel Almudí (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

The Almudí lab is interested in understanding how gene networks evolved in order to give rise to new organs and structures that favored the radiation of insects.

Lorena Aguilar Arnal (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México)

The Aguilar-Arnal lab investigates epigenetic regulatory mechanisms of gene expression programs that are functionally relevant in health and disease. They use a combination of mouse models of disease and human cultured cell lines to dissect critical epigenetic regulatory mechanisms responsible for transitions between health and illness.

Christopher L. Baker (The Jackson Laboratory, USA)

The Baker lab focuses on how natural genetic variation shapes genome function in development. The lab combines both experimental bench work and computational methods to explore the impact of genetic variation on chromatin biology, and, ultimately, phenotypic diversity.

Brenda L. Bass (University of Utah, USA)

The Bass lab is interested in the poorly understood functions of cellular dsRNA, and further, how cells distinguish cellular dsRNA (self) from the viral dsRNA (non-self).

Jonathan Jones (The Sainsbury Lab, UK)

The Jones lab studies the defense mechanisms that plants use to resist pathogen attack and the strategies that pathogens deploy to overcome the plant immune system.

Luis F. Larrondo (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile)

The Larrondo lab uses genetics and synthetic biology approach to study the molecular mechanisms underlying biological oscillators, assessing the impact that circadian clocks have on physiology and in host-pathogen interactions.

Ignacio Maeso (Universitat de Barcelona, Spain)

The Maeso group aims to understand the earliest stages of molecular novelties: how new genes are integrated for the first time into a biological system. The group also studies how changes in gene regulation during development impacts the evolution of animals.

Gunter Meister (Universität Regensburg, Germany)

Research in the Meister lab is focused on the investigation of non-coding RNA pathways in mammalian cells, including post-translational regulation of small RNA pathways, profiling of non-coding RNAs in cancer, study of the regulation of gene expression by RNA-binding proteins, and investigation of RNA-specific base modification pathways.

Vinicius Maracaja-Coutinho (Universidad de Chile, Chile)

The Laboratory of Integrative Bioinformatics is focused on the application, development, and integration of different bioinformatics approaches and datasets to understand the functional aspects, evolution, and disease association of small and long non-coding RNAs.

Julieta Mateos (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

The main focus of the Plant Functional Genomics group is to understand how post-transcriptional and post-translational regulatory mechanisms control plant development and adaptation to diverse stresses.

José Tomás Matus (Universitat de València-CSIC, Spain)

The TOMSBio lab is interested in the transcriptional regulation of secondary metabolism. The current focus of the laboratory is the study, at a global level, of gene regulatory networks that control phenylpropanoid and isoprenoid metabolism in plants.

Stephanie Moon (University of Michigan, USA)

The Moon Lab is interested in how genes are expressed via the coordinated regulation of messenger RNAs at the levels of translation, localization, and decay.

Luca Pinello (The Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT, USA)

The focus of the Pinello laboratory is to use innovative computational approaches and cutting-edge experimental assays, such as CRISPR genome editing and single-cell sequencing, to systematically analyze sources of genetic and epigenetic variation and gene expression variability that underlie human traits and diseases.

Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado (Stowers Institute for Medical Research, USA)

The Sánchez Alvarado lab investigates the genetic basis and molecular processes of regeneration and tissue maintenance.

Robert Schneider (Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany)

The Schneider lab studies histones and chromatin dynamics, with a focus on the interplay between cellular metabolism and histone modifications.

Pablo Smircich (Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Uruguay)

Research in Smircich group uses -omics approaches to study the control of gene expression at the transcriptional and translational levels. An important research area in the lab concerns cell and genome biology of the unicellular parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, the causative agent of Chagas disease.

Anabella Srebrow (Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Research in the Srebrow lab focuses on multiple aspects of gene expression regulation in mammalian cells, including RNA processing and splicing, both in normal physiology and in response to viral infection.

Estefanía Tarifeño-Saldivia (Universidad de Concepción, Chile)

Research in the Tarifeño-Saldivia lab focuses on the effects of metabolic diseases such as obesity on the brain. The lab uses advanced sequencing technologies to investigate epigenetic and transcriptomic changes in neurons that regulate food intake.

Maria Elena Torres-Padilla (Helmholtz Zentrum München, Germany)

The Torres-Padilla lab combines high resolution microscopy, single cell omics, and cell biology approaches to uncover the origin of stem cells and the epigenetic principles that control cellular plasticity.

Sabina Vidal (Universidad de la República, Uruguay)

Research in the Plant Molecular Biology lab focuses on plant stress responses and agricultural biotechnology. The lab uses functional genomics, transgenesis, and gene editing approaches to both understand the molecular mechanisms underlying plant stress tolerance and enhance crop yield and quality.