Xavier Salvatella

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

– Escobedo A, Topal B, Kunze MBA, Aranda J, Chiesa G, Mungianu D, Bernardo-Seisdedos G, Eftekharzadeh B, Gairi M, Pierattelli R, Felli IC, Diercks T, Millet O, García J, Orozco M, Crehuet R, Lindorff-Larsen K & Salvatella X 2019, ‘Side chain to main chain hydrogen bonds stabilize a polyglutamine helix in a transcription factor‘, Nature Communications 10:2034.

– Eftekharzadeh B, Banduseela VC, Chiesa G, Martinez-Cristobal P, Rauch JN, Nath SR, Schwarz DMC, Shao H, Marin-Argany M, Di Sanza C, Giorgetti E, Yu Z, Pieratelli R, Felli IC, Brun-Heath I, Garcia J, Nebreda AR, Gestwicki JE, Lieberman AP & Salvatella X 2019, ‘Hsp70 and Hsp40 inhibit an inter-domain interaction necessary for transcriptional activity in the androgen receptor‘, Nature Communications 10:3562.

– Crehuet R, Buigues PJ, Salvatella X & Lindorff-Larsen K 2019, ‘Bayesian-Maximum-Entropy Reweighting of IDP Ensembles Based on NMR Chemical Shifts‘, Entropy, 21, 9, 898.

– Ciges-Tomas JR, Alite C, Bowring J, Donderis J, Salvatella X, Humphrey S, Penadés JR & Marina A 2019, ‘A polyamorous repressor: deciphering structurally the evolutionary strategy used by the phage-inducible chromosomal islands to spread in nature‘, Nat Commun 10:3676

– Peña-Díaz S, Pujol J, Conde-Jiménez M, Carija A, Dalfó E, García J, Navarro S, Pinheiro F, Santos J, Salvatella X, Sancho J & Ventura S 2019, ‘ZPD-2, a small compound that inhibits α-synuclein amyloid aggregation and its seeded polymerization‘, Front Mol Neurosci 12:306

– Baum J, Chiti F, De Simone A, Knowles TPJ, Kumita JR, Radford SE, Robinson CV, Salvatella X, Valelli K, Vendruscolo M, Pastore A & Tartaglia GG 2019, ‘Homage to Chris Dobson‘, Front Mol Biosci 12:137