Marc Martí-Renom

Centre de Regulació Genòmica

Life & Medical Sciences

I obtained a Ph.D. in Biophysics from the UAB where I worked on protein folding under the supervision of Professors B. Oliva, F.X. Avilés and M. Karplus (Nobel Laureate in 2013). After that, I went to the US for a postdoctoral training on protein structure modeling at the Sali Lab (Rockefeller University) as the recipient of the Burroughs Wellcome Fund fellowship. Later on, I was appointed Assistant Adjunct Professor at UCSF. Between 2006 and 2011, I headed the Structural Genomics Group at the CIPF in Valencia (Spain). Since October 2013, I am ICREA Research Professor and lead the Structural Genomics Group at the CNAG-CRG. Our group is broadly interested on how RNA, proteins and genomes organize and regulate cell fate. I have published over 100 articles in international peer-reviewed journals with over 10000 citations (Google Scholar indexed).


Research interests

How biomolecules fold and function in a three-dimensional space is one of the most challenging questions in biology. For example, we have limited knowledge on how the 2-meter-long DNA molecule folds in the micro-sized nucleus or how RNA, proteins and small chemical compounds fold and interact to perform their most basic functions of the cell. Our research group employ the laws of physics and the rules of evolution to develop and apply experimental and computational methods for predicting the 3D structures of macromolecules and their complexes.

Selected publications

- Marti-Renom MA, Almouzni G, Bickmore WA, Bystricky K, Cavalli G, Fraser P, Gasser SM, Giorgetti L, Heard E, Nicodemi M, Nollmann M, Orozco M, Pombo A & Torres-Padilla ME 2018, 'Challenges and guidelines toward 4D nucleome data and model standards', Nature Genetics, 50, 10, 1352 - 1358.

- Nir G, Farabella I, Pérez Estrada C, Ebeling CG, Beliveau BJ, Sasaki HM, Lee SH, Nguyen SC, McCole RB, Chattoraj S, Erceg J, Abed JA, Martins NMC, Nguyen HQ, Hannan MA, Russell S, Durand NC, Rao SSP, Kishi JY, Soler-Vila P, Di Pierro M, Onuchic JN, Callahan S, Schreiner J, Stuckey J, Yin P, Lieberman Aiden E, Marti-Renom  MA & Wu CT 2018, 'Walking along chromosomes with super-resolution imaging, contact maps, and integrative modeling', PLOS Genetics, 14, 12, e1007872.

- Stadhouders R, Vidal E, Serra F, Di Stefano B, Le Dily F, Quilez J, Gomez A, Collombet S, Berenguer C, Cuartero Y, Hecht J, Filion G, Beato M, Marti-Renom MA & Graf T 2018, 'Transcription Factors Orchestrate Dynamic Interplay Between Genome Topology And Gene Regulation During Cell Reprogramming', Nature Genetics, 50, 2, 238 - +.

- Mas G, Blanco E, Ballaré C, Sansó M, Spill YG, Hu D, Aoi Y, Le Dily F, Shilatifard A, Marti-Renom MA & Di Croce L 2018, 'Promoter bivalency favors an open architecture of the stem cell genome', Nature Genetics, 50 1452–1462.  

- Kojic A, Cuadrado A, De Koninck M, Gimenez-Llorente D, Rodriguez-Corsino M, Gomez-Lopez G, Le Dily F, Marti-Renom MA, Losada A 2018, 'Distinct roles of cohesin-SA1 and cohesin-SA2 in 3D chromosome organization', Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, 25, 6, 496.

Selected research activities

  • Co-Chair of a WP of LifeTime (https://lifetime-fetflagship.eu)
  • Coordinator of 4DNucleome in Europe (https://4dnucleome.eu)
  • Vicepresident of the SCB and Associate Editor of PLOS CB.