During twenty years my scientific career has mainly focused on the study of transcriptional regulation in the nervous system. As a result of my research, I have participated in >70 communications and dissemination conferences, and I have authored 40 indexed publications in high-medium impact journals (PNAS, Cell Death & Differentiation, NAR, Journal of Neuroscience, Neurobiology of disease, Neuropharmacology, EMBO Journal, etc), including original articles and reviews in the field of transcriptomics and epigenetics applied to the study of the brain and associated pathologies, namely Huntington’s disease and Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome. At the end of 2009 I entered into the competitive Ramón y Cajal program as the recipient of a 5-year tenure-track contract. During this period I increasingly gained independence to propose and conduct my own research lines within Dr. Ángel Barco’s lab, located at the most outstanding research center dedicated to Neurosciences in Spain (awarded as Center of Excellence Severo Ochoa by the Spanish Government). Next, I am the recipient of another 5-year tenure-track contract as part of the competitive Miguet Servet program to establish biohealth research lines at the Research Unit of the Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar, part of the new Institute of Biomedicine of Cádiz (INiBICA). I am leading my own group composed by basic and clinical researchers, in collaboration with the Units of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Genetics, and the University of Cádiz.
Molecular and cellular biology (cloning, PCR, culturing, chromatin, microscopy, etc)
Omics and bioinformatics (microarray and NGS data analysis, functional genomics)
Animal behaviour (motor & cognitive tests)
a. Valor LM, Charlesworth P, Humphreys L, Anderson CN, Grant SG. Network activity-independent coordinated gene expression program for synapse assembly. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2007 104(11):4658-63.
b. Valor LM, Jancic D, Lujan R, Barco A. Ultrastructural and transcriptional profiling of neuropathological misregulation of CREB function. Cell Death Differ. 2010 17(10):1636-44.
c. Valor LM, Pulopulos MM, JImenez-Minchan M, Olivares R, Lutz B, Barco A. Ablation of CBP in forebrain principal neurons causes modest memory and transcriptional defects and a dramatic reduction of histone acetylation but does not affect cell viability. J Neurosci. 2011 31(5):1652-63.
d. Valor LM, Guiretti D, López-Atalaya JP, Barco A. Genomic landscape of transcriptional and epigenetic dysregulation in early onset polyglutamine disease. J Neurosci.2013, 33(25): 10471-82.
e. Valor LM, Guiretti D. What’s wrong with epigenetics in Huntington’s disease? Neuropharmacology 2013, 80:103-114.
f. Valor LM. Transcription, epigenetics and ameliorative strategies in Huntington’s disease: a genome-wide perspective. Mol Neurobiol. 2015, 51(1): 406-23.
g. Guiretti D, Sempere A, López-Atalaya JP, Ferrer-Montiel A, Barco A, Valor LM. Specific promoter deacetylation of histone H3 is conserved across mouse models of Huntington’s disease in the absence of bulk changes. Neurobiol Dis.2016, 89: 190-201.
h. Hervás-Corpión I, Guiretti D, Alcaraz-Iborra M, Olivares R, Campos-Caro A, Barco A, Valor LM. Early alteration of epigenetic-related transcription in Huntington’s disease mouse models. Sci Rep. 2018 8(1):9925.