Fitxa persona

. I am an enthusiastic researcher with a strong interest in aquatic microbial ecology. My research background is based on ecogenomics, aquatic metagenomics and cyanobacteria. I completed my PhD in 2018 (UA, Spain) supervised by F. Rodriguez-Valera (UMH, Spain). I was part of various sampling expeditions in Lake Baikal (Russia), the Mediterranean Sea and Spanish freshwater lakes/reservoirs as part of various projects aiming to study aquatic prokaryotes via metagenomics. All these works analysed microbes contributing to the excellent water quality of freshwater lakes (Cabello-Yeves et al 2017 Appl. Env. Microbiol. 84: e02132-17, 2020 Limnol. Oceanogr. 65: 1471-1488, Cabello-Yeves et al 2017a/b, Front. Microbiol. 8: a2131/8: a1151). I have also elucidated the main genomic/proteomic differences of prokaryotes inhabiting marine, brackish and freshwater systems (Cabello-Yeves et al., 2019 Microbiome 7(1), 117). My current research integrates omics and cultured-based approaches using cluster 5 picocyanobacteria. These phototrophs produce ca. 25% of the oxygen of the planet and by fixing carbon they contribute significantly to the food webs and biogeochemical cycles on Earth. I have been working with these organisms since 2016 and have isolated hundreds of freshwater strains from various lakes worldwide in a fruitful collaboration aided by C. Callieri (CNR-IRSA, Italy) and Prof. A. Camacho (UV, Spain). In 2019 I got my first postdoctoral grant (APOSTD, GVA, Spain) which allowed me to perform a large-scale comparative genomics analysis between freshwater picocyanobacteria and their well-studied marine counterparts, supervised by Prof. D. Scanlan at the University of Warwick (UK) (see Cabello-Yeves et al 2022a/b, ISME J 16 (10), 2421-2432 and BMC Biology 20 (1), 175). Hence, I developed a deep interest in understanding why this group of cyanobacteria dominates all aquatic systems on Earth. This allowed me to join Warwick as an Alfonso Martín Escudero (FAME, Spain) and then as a Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow (2023-2025). Last year, I was also interviewed for an ERC-StG for which I got a maximum score (A) albeit my project was not funded. I recently obtained a Ramón y Cajal fellowship (RYC2024-048979-I) and joined the Limnology group at the ICBiBE (UV). As a PI, I have just applied for a type A project from Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento 2025 to start working on viruses of picocyanobacteria (cyanophages). I have created a tight-knit network of international collaborators including cutting edge European microbial ecology groups at the Institute of Hydrobiology CAS/Algatech (Cz. Republic), CNRS-Station Biologique de Roscoff (France) or CNR-IRSA (Italy). I have published 33 peer-reviewed articles in top-ranking microbiology journals including ISME J, Microbiome, BMC Biol., Env. Microbiol., Limnol. Oceanogr. or Appl. Env. Microbiol. or Front. Microbiol. I have supervised three PhD students and organized a one-week metagenomics course at the Universidad de Costa Rica in 2020. I have secured funding through individual fellowships for over 400K € from the GVA, FAME, UKRI/EU M. Curie and now RYC. As a recently established independent researcher, I am leading an interdisciplinary group in the field of aquatic microbial ecology combining culture-independent/dependent approaches with a primary focus on picocyanobacteria and their salinity adaptations.