During L. María Lois's career, she has performed pioneer studies that have been the foundation of new research lines of two novel biological processes: the elucidation of a novel metabolic pathway for isoprenoid biosynthesis and the role of SUMO conjugation as a novel posttranslational modification. Linked to my activity at CRAG, she has been awarded an ERC-starting grant and an ERC-PoC grant.
In 2004, she joined the University of Barcelona (UB) as a young group leader. In 2008, she was appointed to the Spanish Research Council CSIC as Assistant Professor, for establishing my research group. Her interest in pursuing the study of SUMOylation in plants was related to being an unexplored essential process and on its potential for biotechnological applications.
In addition, she has developed a translational research activity aiming to develop SUMO conjugation inhibitors, which have applications in biomedicine, but also in agriculture. Related to this, she received training in business development by the University of Berkeley (2015) and by “La Caixa” Foundation (2017) in the context of the Caixa Impulse Program, for bringing the results to the next step into their commercialization process.
She has obtained local (SGR2008, 2014 and 2017, Llavor 2014, Beatriu de Pinós 2013, Producte 2018), national (BIO2004, 2008 and 2017, FPU2012, CaixaImpulse 2017) and European (ERC-StG2007, ERCPoC2014, EMBO short-term 2014, COST STM2015 and 2021, MSCA-Global 2022) funding grants. In addition to peer review scientific publications, She has edited two books of protocols on Plant Proteostasis (2016 and 2023, Springer). In 2016, she led the organization of a BDebate workshop on Plant Proteostasis and she contributed to the organization of a New Phytologist workshop in 2018 (Durham, UK). In 2023, she coorganized the first EMBO workshop on SUMO, which has gathered experts from biomedicine and plant sciences.
