Xavier Salvatella

Institut de Recerca Biomèdica de Barcelona

Experimental Sciences & Mathematics

I was born in Barcelona, Spain. I obtained my first degree in Chemistry at the University of Barcelona followed by a MSc in Chemical Research at the University of London and a PhD in Organic Chemistry at the University of Barcelona. In 2003, I moved to the University of Cambridge to work as a Research Fellow with Christopher Dobson on the structural and dynamical characterization of proteins. In July 2008, I joined ICREA as a Researcher and the IRB as a Group Leader and in 2013 I became ICREA Research Professor.


Research interests

A high resolution description of the structure and dynamics of proteins is a very useful tool to study the properties and the function of these important biomacromolecules and, most importantly, to understand how changes in sequence or environment can lead to disease. My research work aims, on the one hand, at developing methods to probe the fluctuations of the structure of proteins by combining experimental data and molecular simulations and, on the other hand, at understanding how changes in such motions relate to the molecular recognition of proteins, to their function and to disease.

Selected publications

– De Mol E, Szulc E, Di Sanza C, Martínez-Cristóbal P, Bertoncini CW, Fenwick RB, Frigolé-Vivas Marta, Masín M, Hunter I, Buzón V, Brun-Heath I, García J, De Fabritiis G, Estébanez-Perpiñá E, McEwan IJ, Nebreda A & Salvatella X 2018 ‘Regulation of Androgen Receptor Activity by Transient Interactions of Its Transactivation Domain with General Transcription Regulators‘ Structure, 26,145-152.

– Sabo TM, Gapsys V, Walter KFA, Fenwick RB, Becker S, Salvatella X, de Groot BL, Lee D & Griesinger C 2018, ‘Utilizing dipole-dipole cross-correlated relaxation for the measurement of angles between pairs of opposing C alpha H alpha-C alpha H alpha bonds in anti-parallel beta-sheets’, Methods, 138, 85 – 92.

– Bouchard JJ, Otero JH, Scott DC, Szulc E, Martin EW, Sabri Na, Granata D, Marzahn MR, Lindorff-Larsen K, Salvatella X, Schulman BA & Mittag T 2018, ‘Cancer Mutations of the Tumor Suppressor SPOP Disrupt the Formation of Active, Phase-Separated Compartments’, Molecular Cell, 72, 1, 19 – 36.

– Pujols J, Peña-Díaz S, Lazaro DF, Peccati F, Pinheiro F, González D, Carija A, Navarro S, Conde-Giménez M, García J, Guardiola S, Giralt E, Salvatella X, Sancho J, Sodupe M, Outeiro TF, Dalfo E & Ventura S 2018, ‘Small molecule inhibits alpha-synuclein aggregation, disrupts amyloid fibrils, and prevents degeneration of dopaminergic neurons’, Proc. Nati. Acad. Sci. 115, 41, 10481 – 10486.