Presentation

Open positions

Our lab is always open to spontanoeus applications. 

We welcome applications from people from a diverse range of backgrounds (regardless of age, gender, sexual identity, religious background, ...). We offer an inclusive working environment in which people enjoy equal opportunities and are able to fulfill their potential.

About me

After completing a Masters in Microbiology in my hometown in the North of Spain, Oviedo, I decided to join for my PhD the Genetics of Biofilms lab in the Institut  Pasteur, supervised by  Jean-Marc Ghigo . During this time, I characterized several bioactive molecules specifically produced within bacterial communities  (biofilms) that inhibit competitors from entering the biofilm.  Towards the end of my PhD, I became increasingly interested in ecology and evolutionary theory. Thus, for my first postdoctoral training,  I joined the Evolutionary Biology Lab led by Gregory J. Velicer in ETH Zürich, who had a unique system to tackle the evolution of a social microbe and how such interactions could shape biodiversity and species evolution. Specifically I determined how microbes evolved the ability to discern self from non-self.

In the era of big data and –omics technology, evolutionary questions and biological process at larger scales cannot be efficiently tackled without the help of computational biology and comparative genomics.  I therefore joined a computational lab led by Eduardo Rocha in the Institut Pasteur, and took interest on a major cellular structure and virulence factor, the extracellular bacterial capsule. Within the Rocha lab, I set up the experimental laboratory and established my independent line of research as an CNRS researcher.  Since 2019,  my team studies the impact of the capsule on bacterial adaptation. We showed that the capsule is a main driver of both competitive outcomes and shapes the rate of gene transfer across bacterial cells.

At the beginning of 2024, I moved to the Center of Integrative Biology (CBI), in Toulouse, and joined the Laboratory of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics (LMGM). My research integrates different time scales (direct competition, microevolution and macroevolution) and  different levels of organization, from the single-cell level to mixed communities, including interkingdom interactions. 

When not in the lab, I enjoy everything outdoorsy like running, gardening, biking, hiking or just sitting on a terrace. On the off change it rains,  i like cooking, specially desserts,  and beer tasting.

Research interests

I am developing a multidisciplinary project integrating molecular microbiology, population biology, macro- and micro- evolution using the facultative pathogen Klebsiella pneumoniae as a model. My research explores how how cellular surface structures shape complex microbial interactions, thereby impacting horizontal gene transfer, adaptation, and determining the evolution of structure and function of complex communities. Our work considers evolutionary time scales, as well as different levels of biological organization (from the single-cell to the community level).

I aim to : 

• Quantify the short-term fitness and metabolic costs of capsule production by generating a panel of capsule null mutants and assessing their competitive index against their capsulated variant, and we will correlate this with capsule thickness and expression levels of genes involved in its production and secretion.

• Understand how capsules affect bacterial adaptation to new environments through hundreds of generations (micro-evolution). I undertook  a mid-term evolution experiment and I am currently analysing how the populations adapted the mutations that emerged through time across the different environments and compare them to those observed in natural populations.

• Determine the  impact of the different serotypes in Klebsiella genome evolution and the interplay between the capsule and mobile genetic elements.

Curriculum Vitae

2024 - Group leader @ LMGM

2022 – Geroges, Jacques & Elias Canetti Prize, Institut Pasteur

2021 – CNRS Bronze Medal

2020–2021 Member of the CID27 of the National Research Committee (CoNRS)

Since 2019 – Co-Chair of the French Society of Microbiology: Section Biodiversity & Evolution.

Since 2019 –Group Leader in Pasteur Institute in the Microbial Evolutionary Genomics lab.

2018– Habilitation in Biology (U Paris Sorbonne, Paris).

Since 2018 – Junior researcher (CR) at the UMR3525 CNRS in Pasteur Institute.

2015-2017- FRM fellow, Postdoc @ Microbial Evolutionary Genomics lab, in Institut Pasteur under the supervision of Eduardo Rocha.

2012-2015 – EMBO Fellow, Postdoc @ Evolutionary Biology group, Velicer lab, (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)

2008-2011– PhD inMicrobiology (U Diderot-Paris VII, France), in Institut Pasteur under the supervision of Jean Marc Ghigo.

2007- MSc in Clinical Microbiology  (U Oviedo, Spain)

Projets personnels

Publications

• Nucci A, Rocha EPC, Rendueles O.
  Latent evolution of biofilm formation depends on life-history and genetic background
  NPJ Biofilms Microbiomes
  2024 Aug
• Haudiquet M, Le Bris J, Nucci A, Bonnin RA, Domingo-Calap P, Rocha EPC, Rendueles O..
  Capsules and their traits shape phage susceptibility and plasmid conjugation efficiency.
  Nature Communications
  2024 Mar
• Nucci A, Janaszkiewicz J, Rocha EPC, Rendueles O.
  Emergence of novel non-aggregative variants under negative frequency-dependent selection in Klebsiella variicola.
  MicroLife
  2023 Sep
• D'Angelo F, Rocha EPC, Rendueles O.
  The Capsule Increases Susceptibility to Last-Resort Polymyxins, but Not to Other Antibiotics, in Klebsiella pneumoniae
  Antimicrob Agents Chemother.
  2023 Apr
• Nucci A, Rocha EPC, Rendueles O..
  Adaptation to novel spatially-structured environments is driven by the capsule and alters virulence-associated traits.
  Nature Communications
  2022 Aug

View all publications