Irene Díaz Moreno

Group: Biointeratomics

Position: Full Professor at the University of Seville

Contact

Tel. ext: 446213

Laboratory: L 204

Office: D 203

Email:

ORCID: 0000-0002-5318-7644

Biography

Irene Díaz Moreno (Sevilla, 1977) is Full Professor at the University of Seville (US), working at the Institute of Chemical Research (IIQ) in the Scientific Research Centre Isla de la Cartuja (cicCartuja), a joint centre between US-National Research Council (CSIC)-Andalusian Government (JA).

Prof. Irene Díaz Moreno studied a B.Sc in Biology and M.Sc in Biochemistry at the US. Then, she was granted a Ministry Collaboration Fellowship, to join the Institute of Plant Biochemistry and Photosynthesis (IBVF) at cicCartuja, and a CSIC JAE-Intro Fellowship, to work at the Biological Research Centre (CIB) in Madrid. She developed her Doctoral Thesis between 2001-2005 at IBVF, under the supervision of Prof. Miguel A. De la Rosa. After that, she was granted an EMBO postdoctoral Fellowship to work at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR) of the Medical Research Council (MRC), in the United Kingdom.

The researcher is internationally recognized for her contributions to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance applied to molecular recognition processes. Her fruitful work has led her to be author of 2 books, 3 patents, and more than 110 articles in scientific journals of high index factor. She has overseen ca. 15 research projects/contracts, 9 Doctoral Thesis, and is currently supervising 5 PhD students. She has given around 70 conferences around the world. She was Vice-president of the Spanish Biophysical Society (SBE) and is now the Vice-president of the Spanish Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (SEBBM). Besides, she is member of the Executive Committee of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS), responsible for the FEBS Careers of Young Scientists Group, and member of the Education and Congresses and Focused Meetings Committees of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (IUBMB). She also participates as member of international evaluation panels, being remarkable her role a Vice-president of EU-MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships.

Research interests

The research work of Prof. Irene Díaz Moreno focuses on the post-transcriptional and post-translational regulation of cellular responses to DNA damage, by characterizing the recognition mode between mitochondrial cytochrome c and several histone chaperones, and the nucleus-mitochondria crosstalk. Besides, she oversees a research line that studies the role of disordered linkers and RNA Binding Domains in multivalent molecular contacts that drive liquid-liquid phase transitions, causing biomolecular condensates assembly and their impact on neurodegenerative diseases. To characterize these molecular mechanisms, she applies biophysical techniques, such as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR), Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC), or Bio-Layer interferometry (BLI), as well as Molecular Dynamics computational tools. Prof. Irene Díaz Moreno Moreno has established productive international collaborations with leaders such as Prof. Jacqueline A. Wilce (Monash University, AU), Dr. Myriam Gorospe (National Institute of Aging-NIH, USA) and Prof. Maik Hüttemann (Wayne State University, USA). Part of these studies were carried out thanks to projects performed in European Infrastructures, the General Services of the US (CITIUS) and the Biomolecular Interactions Platform at cicCartuja/CITIUS, in whose design and implementation Prof. Díaz-Moreno has been actively involved. Her extensive experience in molecular interactions has facilitated collaboration with the productive sector through contracts with several companies such as Bruker Spain S.L., TA Instruments, González-Byass or Mahou San Miguel.

Selected publications

• Isoform-specific regulation of PKM by acetylation. Pavlenko D., Tamargo-Azpilicueta J., Nudelman H., Ankri Y., Shahar A., Díaz-Moreno I., Arbely E. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2025 Dec 2;122(48):e2527086122. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2527086122. Epub 2025 Nov 25. PMID: 41289402.
• Cytochrome c lysine acetylation regulates cellular respiration and cell death in ischemic skeletal muscle. Morse P. T., Pérez-Mejías G., Wan J., Turner A. A., Márquez I., Kalpage H. A., Vaishnav A., Zurek M. P., Huettemann P. P., Kim K., Arroum T., De la Rosa M. A., Chowdhury D. D., Lee I., Brunzelle J. S., Sanderson T. H., Malek M. H., Meierhofer D., Edwards B. F. P., Díaz-Moreno I., Hüttemann M. Nat. Commun. 2023 Jul;14(1):4166. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-39820-8. PMID: 37443314; PMCID: PMC10345088.
• Phosphorylation disrupts long-distance electron transport in cytochrome c. Gomila A. M. J., Pérez-Mejías G., Nin-Hill A., Guerra-Castellano A., Casas-Ferrer L., Ortiz-Tescari S., Díaz-Quintana A., Samitier J., Rovira C., De la Rosa M. A., Díaz-Moreno I., Gorostiza P., Giannotti M. I., Lagunas A. Nat Commun. 2022 Nov;13(1):7100. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-34809-1. PMID: 36402842; PMCID: PMC9675734.
• Nucleus-translocated mitochondrial cytochrome c liberates nucleophosmin-sequestered ARF tumor suppressor by changing nucleolar liquid-liquid phase separation. González-Arzola K., Díaz-Quintana A., Bernardo-García N., Martínez-Fábregas J., Rivero-Rodríguez F., Casado-Combreras M. Á., Elena-Real C. A., Velázquez-Cruz A., Gil-Caballero S., Velázquez-Campoy A., Szulc E., Gavilán M. P., Ayala I., Arranz R., Ríos R. M., Salvatella X., Valpuesta J. M., Hermoso J. A., De la Rosa M. A., Díaz-Moreno I. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 2022 Oct;29(10):1024-1036. doi: 10.1038/s41594-022-00842-3. Epub 2022 Oct 11. PMID: 36220893.
• Oxidative stress is tightly regulated by cytochrome c phosphorylation and respirasome factors in mitochondria. Guerra-Castellano A., Díaz-Quintana A., Pérez-Mejías G., Elena-Real C. A., González-Arzola K., García-Mauriño S. M., De la Rosa M. A., Díaz-Moreno I. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2018 Jul 31;115(31):7955-7960. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1806833115. Epub 2018 Jul 17. PMID: 30018060; PMCID: PMC6077723.