Claudia de la Cruz

University of Copenhagen
Brief Biography: 

I graduated in Biochemical Engineering with a major in Biotechnology. During my bachelor I got involved in projects related to analysis of polyphenols in cocoa beans during fermentation and characterization of microbial biodiversity.  Fermentation is a key process for producing a good quality chocolate. Another project I worked was analyzing enzymatic activity and expression of laccases by fungi.  Laccases are very interesting for biotechnological process as for paper production.  I had a master degree in Genetics & Molecular Biology by The Center for Research advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (CINVESTAV) in Mexico, my thesis project was about the characterization of MAP2 promoter in PC12 cells.  This protein is thought to be involved in microtubule assembly, which is an essential step in neurogenesis.  I also was a visitant scholar at the University of Copenhagen where I studied host range and frequency of horizontal gene transfer of pKJK10 conjugative plasmid into microbial population isolated from soil.

Currently I´m still interested in figure out how horizontal gene transfer in soil is affected by environmental changes and stress factors. The aim of my current work is to develop new ways of expand our knowledge about what promotes the transfer of genetic material into microbial populations and in some way to establish new bioindicators to measure soil quality.