Jorge Gutierrez-Merino
Senior Lecturer in Food MicrobiologyDepartment of Nutritional Sciences, School of Biosciences and Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, University of Surrey, UK -j.gutierrez@surrey.ac.uk
Thursday 19th May, 2022, 5pm
‘Beneficial bacteria to combat inflammatory disorders and microbial infections’
Dr Gutierrez-Merino is a veterinarian and a molecular microbiologist with an extensive experience in the area of probiotics. He currently works for the School of Biosciences and Medicine as a Senior Lecturer in Food Microbiology. Jorge has previously worked as a researcher for Complutense University of Madrid, National Research Council of Canada, University of Groningen, University College Dublin and the Spanish National Research Council. His expertise focuses on optimising the use of beneficial commensals such as Lactic Acid Bacteria (LAB) to tackle infectious diseases and inflammatory disorders in humans and animals.
Very recently, Jorge’s research group has discovered that human LAB induce type I interferon responses via cytosolic recognition mediated by intracellular nucleic acid sensors MAVS and STING (Gutierrez-Merino et al., 2020 Gut Microbes). Simultaneously, Jorge has also published that LAB isolated from wildlife antagonize intracellular pathogens as a consequence of their antimicrobial activity and competitive phagocytic responses (Bravo et al., 2021 Appl Environ Microbiol; Bravo et al., 2019, Front Microbiol). Both studies have demonstrated the existence of LAB-specific immune signatures, which can be exploited to promote cytoprotective host responses.
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