David Paez-Espino obtained a Ph.D. in synthetic and molecular biology and biochemistry techniques at the CNB-CSIC in Madrid, Spain, and gained a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley, USA, for expanding skills in metagenomics, virus-host dynamics, and acquiring programming ability. This work included a collaboration with Danisco USA Inc. (now Dupont), that was attractive to collaborate with the biotech industry.

David also has a strong wet-lab background in molecular biology for bioremediation of contaminated soils and synthetic biology complemented with bio-computational analysis for the last 10 years.

David’s top scientific interests are:

(1) Discovery of New CRISPR-Cas systems. Focusing in Class2 (for gene/genome-editing applications)

(2) Discovery of novel viral genes and genomes.

(3) Establishment of a rational linkage between host-virus interactions revealed in metagenomes of environmental samples.

(4) Global distribution of the microbial viral-defence systems based on CRISPR-Cas.

(5) Discovery of novel protein functions in bacteria and archaea.

(6) Improvement of the binning and annotation of metagenomes.

(7) Deep microbial community analyses of unusual environments.