Alberto Carbonell

Biography

Alberto Carbonell (AC) is a CSIC Científico Titular researcher (start date: 16/12/2023) who leads the “Plant Small RNA Biotechnology” group at IBMCP. His research has focused on the study of different areas of RNA biology in plants and viruses: from the basic understanding on how RNAs regulate gene expression and control or induce diseases to a more applied and biotechnological research aiming to engineer artificial small RNAs (art-sRNAs) for the efficient and selective control of plant gene expression or to repress pathogenic RNAs and generate disease resistance.

AC graduated in 2001 as Agricultural Engineer (major in Biotechnology) from UPV. During his PhD at IBMCP he developed several RNA-based tools to engineer plant resistance against viroids. In his 1st postdoc at CNB (Madrid), he studied how RNA viruses induce infections in susceptible hosts, and identified viral pathogenicity determinants in different Potyviridae proteins. In his 2nd postdoc at OSU (Corvallis, USA) and DDPSC (St Louis, USA), he investigated how plant sRNAs function through their interaction with ARGONAUTE (AGO) proteins. He also developed a platform including new molecular and bioinformatics tools for high-throughput design and generation of art-sRNA constructs for highly specific and effective gene silencing in plants. These tools have been very well accepted and are widely used for gene function study based on the number of publications referring to them (>40).

Since his reintegration in 2015 at the IBMCP with a Marie S. Curie Individual Fellowship, he has focused in further understanding how AGO complexes function in posttranscriptional gene regulation and antiviral defense in plants. During his Ramón y Cajal he has obtained national funding (grants RTI2018-095118-A-I00 and PID2021-122186OB-100) from Agencia Estatal de Investigación, to optimize art-sRNA-based biotechnological tools that so far have allowed fine-tuning flowering time in Arabidopsis and enhancing antiviral defense in tomato plants against Tomato spotted wilt virus. Current and future research includes the development of art-sRNA-based methods for GMO-free RNAi to accelerate the generation of more efficient, next-generation crops in a sustainable way and in line with international laws.