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04 January 2024: Interested in conducting a PhD in the topic of optical and chemical control of membranes, peptides and proteins?
We are looking for competitive candidates to apply for a PhD Fellowship granted by the Spanish Government (FPU program). See more information in the Positions page
Call (closed)
03 November 2023: Interested in conducting a PhD in the topic of optical and chemical control of membranes, peptides and proteins?
We are looking for competitive candidates to apply for a PhD Fellowship granted by the Valencian Regional Government.
New Welcome Guides
08 May 2023: The HRS4R at the UV has published a set of welcome guides for new employees.
The Human esources Strategy for Researchers – HRS4R supports research institutions and funding organizations in the implementation of the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers in their policies and practices. The guides advise new foreign employees about multiple practical and administrative aspects they will need to take care of before moving to Spain and once in Spain. They also include guides for living in Valencia, for integrating into the University and for using the University services,
MECAREACT 2023
15 February 2023: School on Vibrational and electronic spectroscopies (Paris, France, 18-23 Jun 2023). Víctor will teach there about Application to photobiology.
Funded by the French Council of Scientific Research (CNRS), the School will cover the main fields of vibrational and electronic spectroscopies applied to the investigation of reaction mechanisms in various fields of chemistry (photochemistry, biochemistry, catalysis, etc.). It aims at establishing a common framework for the different scientific communities using the above spectroscopies. It will provide the tools to understand the information that vibrational and electronic spectroscopy techniques (IR, Raman, Resonance Raman, UV-Vis, fluorescence, etc.) can bring for the investigation of reaction mechanisms, and enable participants to identify the most appropriate experimental and computationa chemistry approaches and strategies for data treatment and spectral interpretation. A special emphasis will be given to synergistic approaches combining various spectroscopic techniques. The deadline for registration is March 15th 2023.
Call (closed)
06 February 2023: Postdoctoral position to work in adding optical control to the folding, insertion and dimerization of TM helices.
The project aims to use an external light stimulous to control the insertion, folding and dimerization of transmembrane (TM) protein helices in lipid membranes, to better understand these relevant processes at the molecular level. The candidate will use chemical and biophysical strategies to achieve this goal, including: the synthesis of light-sensitive membrane protein fragments, their characterization by static and time-resolved spectroscopies and their study using molecular dynamics simulations.
DeepMind releases the AlphaFold Database of predicted protein structures.
23 July 2021: From this historical date, AlphaFold DB will provide open access to protein structure predictions for the human proteome and 20 other key organisms.
AlphaFold is an AI system developed by DeepMind that predicts the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence. It regularly achieves accuracy competitive with experiments. The information released today includes over 360000 atomic resolution structuresr; about double than the total number of experimental structures of macromolecules available to date via the PDB (of which only ~100000 correspond to unique proteins). In coming months, the AlphaFold Protein Structure Database plans to expand 'to cover a large proportion of all catalogued proteins' (over 100 million!).In an article in the journal Structure Stephen Burley and Helen Berman name this event A cornerstone for artificial intelligence approaches to protein structure prediction. We believe that the latest achievements of AlphaFold, able to accurately predict the structures of proteins in numbers that reach the complete proteome of organisms, are only comparable with the scientific revolution in the 50's of the 20th century, represented by the experimental elucidation of the structure of the DNA double helix (Rosalind Franklin together with Watson, Crick and Wilkins) and first structures of globular proteins (Perutz and Kendrew). The AlphaFold DB has been jointly developed by DeepMind and the EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). It will undoubtedly boost our understanding of biology at a molecular level and quickly become an invaluable new tool to accelerate scientific research in all life and molecular science fields.
María Zambrano postdoc grants
8 July 2021: Call for applicants who wish to work at the University of Valencia. Find more details in our Positions page!
Young doctors of any field and any nationality can now apply to these fellowships. Applicants need to contact first to a research group of the University of Valencia which must agree to support the applicant's project. Eligible cadidates must have at least two years of postdoc experience in a research center different from the University of Valencia and also different from the University where they made their PhD. In addition, they must be working at the moment outside Spain. The contracts will be offered for 1-3 years. The deadline for applications is September 8th 2021.20 April 2021: Government creates new funding scheme for postdocs
As part of a new package that intends to modernise Spanish public Universities by suppoting requalification of their scientists, the Spanish Government has just approved María Zambrano postdoc grants. This is a talent-attraction pluri-annual program for the 2021-2023 period that targets young researchers of any nationality with at least two years postdoc experience outside Spain.
Call (closed)
9 Sept 2020: Master's student internship to work in light-controllable membrane-bound peptides.
We offer one Internship Contract for a Master's Student (undergraduate) with a duration of 4 months within the current academic year. This will include support and supervision to perform your master's project and a salary of €400 per month. Candidates must hold a degree in Chemistry, Physics, Biochemistry or Biotechnology, completed during the latest academic year, with an average mark of at least 8.0 over 10. They must be ready to enroll in a master's study of the Universitat de València in the course 2020/21. See the Positions page for more details.
Call (closed)
4 June 2020: Predoctoral position to work in a new project.
NOTE: Suitable candidates for this project have already been found.
The project aims to implement optical control for the insertion, folding and dimerization of hydrophobic protein fragments in lipid membranes, to better understand these relevant processes at the molecular level. The candidate will use chemical and biophysical strategies to achieve this goal, including: the synthesis of light-sensitive membrane protein fragments, their characterization by static and time-resolved spectroscopies, and the development of novel applications based on the achieved results.
Monumental review, just published by Víctor
14 May 2020: Chem Rev (2020) 120: 3466-3576.
Infrared Difference Spectroscopy - IDS, applied to proteins or other biomolecules, is a very powerful methodology that allows us to discover detailed structural and dynamical aspects with high temporal resolution and with specificity of chemical groups. In terms of the quality and quantity of information that it provides, it has nothing to envy from other, more 'popular', spectroscopies, like NMR. Yet, the tremendous capabilities of IDS in Biophysics are still not widely known or used by most researchers. This probably has to do with the sophistication of specific pieces of hardware that are required for some of these applications, which are normally not available in most laboratories, and with the high level of expertise that is needed to plan, run and interpret the IDS experiments. Víctor has used his many years of experience in all of that to gather and summarize the most important recent discoveries made by using IDS specially in he field of membrane proteins. The result is a large and very thorough account just published in Chemical Reviews.
Eduardo Santamaría visits our lab
22 Oct 2018
He gave a seminar (Wed. 24 Oct) entitled Design and synthesis of photomodulable peptides for biological applications. Eduardo works in Diego Sampedro's group, at the University of La Rioja. They collaborate with us in the design, synthesis and characterization of biologically active peptides coupled to photoswitches, closely in connection to one of our projects
Publication in JACS by Víctor
8 Aug 2018: Clues about how channelrhodopsin-2 desensitizates
The work is entitled Photoexcitation of the P4480 State Induces a Secondary Photocycle That Potentially Desensitizes Channelrhodopsin-2 and is a collaboration with the groups of Joachim Heberle and Ramona Schlesinger (Free University, Berlin).
Our Explora-Science project was selected
26 Jun 2018
Explora-Science, founding high-risk high-gain projects, has approved our project entitled Vibrational pH-sensors with sub-microsecond and sub-micrometer resolution. Soon we will start looking for PhD candidates. Find here more about the project
Positions available !
25 Jan 2018: We look for PhD and PostDoc candidates
The positions are linked to the project Optical control of folding, membrane insertion and biological activity of photoswitchable hydrophobic peptides, founded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness. Candicates will be selected at the end of March and expected to start by June 2018. See the PhD and PostDoc call for details on the application procedure
Víctor just published in Nature Communications
22 Jan 2018: A collaborative work about protonated water clusters in proteins
The work is entitled Orientation of non-spherical protonated water clusters revealed by infrared absorption dichroism and is a collaboration between the experimental group of Joachim Heberle and the theoretical group of Roland R. Netz (Free University, Berlin).
Our new website is up and running!
22 Jan 2018: You are seeing it now!
Our group was recently registered at the University of Valencia with its new name Biofísica de Membranas. Apart from the standard website provided by the University, we have 'coded' a new one.
Víctor's new publication is available
05 Dec 2017: Just published in PNAS
The work is entitled pH-sensitive vibrational probe reveals a cytoplasmic protonated cluster in bacteriorhodopsin and is a collaboration with the group of Joachim Heberle (Free University, Berlin).
