Marc Martí-Renom

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 125 articles in international peer-reviewed journals with over 18,000 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

- Nguyen, Huy Q.; Chattoraj, Shyamtanu; Castillo, David; Nguyen, Son C.; Nir, Guy; Lioutas, Antonios; Hershberg, Elliot A.; Martins, Nuno M. C.; Reginato, Paul L.; Hannan, Mohammed; Beliveau, Brian J.; Church, George M.; Daugharthy, Evan R.; Marti-Renom, Marc A.; Wu, C-ting 2020, '3D mapping and accelerated super-resolution imaging of the human genome using in situ sequencing', Nature Methods, 17, 8, 822 - +.

- Di Stefano, Marco; Stadhouders, Ralph; Farabella, Irene; Castillo, David; Serra, Francois; Graf, Thomas; Marti-Renom, Marc A. 2020, 'Transcriptional activation during cell reprogramming correlates with the formation of 3D open chromatin hubs', Nature Communications, 11, 1.

- Galan, Silvia; Machnik, Nick; Kruse, Kai; Diaz, Noelia; Marti-Renom, Marc A.; Vaquerizas, Juan M. 2020, 'CHESS enables quantitative comparison of chromatin contact data and automatic feature extraction', Nature Genetics, 52, 11, 1247 - +.

- Soler-Vila, Paula; Cusco, Pol; Farabella, Irene; Di Stefano, Marco; Marti-Renom, Marc A. 2020, 'Hierarchical chromatin organization detected by TADpole', Nucleic Acids Research, 48, 7, e39.

- Stik, Gregoire; Vidal, Enrique; Barrero, Mercedes; Cuartero, Sergi; Vila-Casadesus, Maria; Mendieta-Esteban, Julen; Tian, Tian V; Choi, Jinmi; Berenguer, Clara; Abad, Amaya; Borsari, Beatrice; le Dily, Francois; Cramer, Patrick; Marti-Renom, Marc A; Stadhouders, Ralph; Graf, Thomas 2020, 'CTCF is dispensable for immune cell transdifferentiation but facilitates an acute inflammatory response.', Nature Genetics, 52, pages655–661.

Selected research activities

  • Coordinator of the Spain-INC network.
  • Chair of the International Nucleome Consortium COST Action  (https://inc-cost.eu)
  • Steering Committee of LifeTime (https://lifetime-fetflagship.eu).
  • Coordinator of 4DNucleome in Europe (https://4dnucleome.eu).
  • Vicepresident of the Societat Catalana de Biologia.