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Staff member

Amayra Hernández Vega

Molecular Bionics
CV Summary
Amayra Hernández-Vega (Ramón y Cajal Researcher)

Our research
Our long-term goal is to understand neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer's Disease (AD) and Tau's contribution to it. We aim with this knowledge to find the best therapeutic strategies to prevent this devastating disease. To this end, my team combines in vitro reconstitution and neurons in culture.

Emerging evidence highlights the urgent need for early intervention in AD, and a major global effort is underway to validate the best biomarkers to detect the disease before symptoms appear. Yet, to truly succeed in the race against dementia, we must also gain a deeper understanding of how the disease progresses at the cellular and subcellular levels.
Neurons are highly specialized cells with long, thin projections that depend on continuous intracellular transport. This unique morphology makes them particularly vulnerable to traffic disruptions and other perturbations affecting the delivery of essential cargo to synapses.

Our research focuses on deciphering and targeting early structural and dynamic changes in these neuronal processes - changes that may represent some of the earliest events in Alzheimer's disease.

Link to external Group Website

Grants
2026 ⎯ 2030Consortium Grant: Pasqual Maragall Researchers Programme (PMRP 2024) - 2024-1366 MAPtoAD
2026 ⎯ 2028Proyectos de Generación de Conocimiento 2024 (PID2024-160613OA-I00) - TauiST
2024 ⎯ 2026Ayudas para Incentivar la Consolidación Investigadora (Grants to Encourage Research Consolidation), CNS2023-145393
2024 ⎯ 2025BIST Ignite seed stage.
2023 ⎯ 2027Ramón y Cajal contract, RYC2021‐031779‐I

Collaborators
  • Natalia Rodriguez Muela, Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE), Dresden, Germany.
  • Thomas Surrey, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona, Spain.
  • Lorena Ruiz Perez, University of Barcelona, UB - Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia, IBEC
  • Giuseppe Battaglia, IBEC, Barcelona, Spain.
Staff member publications

Hernández-Vega, Amayra, Marsal, María, Pouille, Philippe-Alexandre, Tosi, Sébastien, Colombelli, Julien, Luque, Tomás, Navajas, Daniel, Pagonabarraga, Ignacio, Martín-Blanco, Enrique, (2017). Polarized cortical tension drives zebrafish epiboly movements EMBO Journal 36, (1), 25-41

The principles underlying the biomechanics of morphogenesis are largely unknown. Epiboly is an essential embryonic event in which three tissues coordinate to direct the expansion of the blastoderm. How and where forces are generated during epiboly, and how these are globally coupled remains elusive. Here we developed a method, hydrodynamic regression (HR), to infer 3D pressure fields, mechanical power, and cortical surface tension profiles. HR is based on velocity measurements retrieved from 2D+T microscopy and their hydrodynamic modeling. We applied HR to identify biomechanically active structures and changes in cortex local tension during epiboly in zebrafish. Based on our results, we propose a novel physical description for epiboly, where tissue movements are directed by a polarized gradient of cortical tension. We found that this gradient relies on local contractile forces at the cortex, differences in elastic properties between cortex components and the passive transmission of forces within the yolk cell. All in all, our work identifies a novel way to physically regulate concerted cellular movements that might be instrumental for the mechanical control of many morphogenetic processes.

JTD Keywords: Epiboly, Hydrodynamics, Mechanics, Morphogenesis, Zebrafish