Viral Assembly and Biological System Laboratory
Graduate Students
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Brianda Agundis-Tinajero (August 2024) - M.Sc.
Brianda obtained her engineering degree in biomedicine, and she is pursuing an M.Sc. Life Science Master’s Program at the Science Department at UASLP. She was being co-tutored by Profs. Mauricio Comas-Garcia and Aldo Mejia-Rodriguez. She developed software based on Artificial intelligence to find and characterize damaged mitochondrion in SARS-CoV-2 infected cells.
Denisse Cadena-Lopez (August 2024) - M.Sc.
Denisse obtained her B.Sc. in Chemical Pharmacobiology at the Chemical Science Department at UASLP. She obtained her M.Sc. degree in the Graduate Program of Life Sciences in the Science Department. Her thesis project focused on developing a neutralizing assay for SARS-CoV-2, using a single-round replication SARS-CoV-2 VLPs that contain all the structural proteins of this virus and selectively package a self-replicating RNA. Prtof. Sergio Rosales-Mendoza was her thesis co-director.
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Ignacio Lara-Hernández (August - 2023) - Ph.D.
Ignacio obtained his B.Eng. in Bioprocesses from the Chemistry Department at UASLP, and his M.Sc. and Ph.D. at the Basic Biomedical Sciences Program at the Medical School (UASLP). His Ph.D. work focused on understanding and characterizing how the mitochondria are affected during infection with the human respiratory syncytial virus by thin-section TEM (co-PI Prof. Andreu Comas-Garcia). He also helps in all projects that involve thin-section TEM.
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Alan Araujo-Mireles (June - 2023 ) - M.Sc.
Alan obtained her B.Sc. in Environmental Sciences at the Medical School at UASLP and his M.Sc. Basic Biomedical Sciences Master’s Program at the Medical School (UASLP). He was co-tutored by Profs. Mauricio Comas-Garcia and Claudia Castillo and his thesis focused on developing an infectious Zika virus clone that expresses super folded GFP as a reporter gene, in a way that the amino acid identity of the viral proteins is not affected by the insertion of the reporter gene.
Mayra Colunga-Saucedo (May - 2023) - Ph.D.
Mayra obtained his B.Eng. in Bioprocesses from the Chemistry Department at UASLP and his M.Sc. at the Basic Biomedical Sciences Program at the Medical School (UASLP). Her Ph.D. focused on generating a fully infectious CMV-driven plasmid that contains the full-length CHIKV 181/25 genome and a series of helper and replicon plasmids.
Edson I. Rubio-Hernández (March - 2023) - Ph.D.
Edson obtained his B.Eng. in Bioprocesses from the Chemistry Department at UASLP. His Ph.D. work focused on understanding the neurovirulence of the Zika virus (co-PI Prof. Claudia Castillo-Martin del Campo).
Claudia Alemendarez-Rodriguez (December - 2022) - M.Sc.
Claudia obtained her B.S. in Chemical Pharmacobiology at the Chemistry Department at UASLP. She got her M.Sc. student in the Bio-processes Science Graduate Program in the Chemistry Department. She was co-tutored by Profs. Mauricio Comas-Garcia and Sergio Rosales-Mendoza. Her thesis aimed to develop a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine using a plant virus capsid protein to display antigenic regions of SARS-CoV-2.
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Arleth Miranda-Lopez (December - 2021) - M.Sc.
Arleth obtained her Eng. Degree in Pharmacobiology from the Oaxaca University. She was a Master's student in the Pharmacobiologics Graduate Program at the UASLP medical school. Her thesis dissertation focused on producing an oral inactivated vaccine against ZIKV. She was co-tutored by Profs. Mauricio Comas-Garcia and Sergio Rosales-Mendoza. She is now doing her Ph.D. on inactivated ZIKV vaccines as well with a new platform of "empty" ZIKV VLPs with Prof. Comas-García and Rosales-Mendoza.
Antonio Zúñiga-Izaguirre (October - 2021) - M.Sc
Antonio obtained his B.Eng. in Nanotechnology and Renewable Energies from the Science Department at UASLP. He enrolled in the Basic Biomedical Sciences Master’s Program at the Medical School (UASLP). His work focused on engineering the Zika virus to produce in mammalian cells empty virions that contain all structural proteins and the lipid membrane but no RNA.
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Undergraduate Students
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Maria Villalba-Nieto (October - 2023)
Maria obtained her B.Sc. in Biology at the Science Department at UASLP. Her B.Sc. thesis focused on generating a high-efficiency expression system of non-infectious Zika virus-like particles, devoid of genetic material, using different mammalian expression systems. After defining her thesis, she graduated with Honors, becoming the first student to obtain that distinction in the Biology Undergraduate program at the Science Department at UASLP.
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Fernanda Campos-Melendez (June - 2023)
Miguel obtained her B.Sc. in Biology at the Science Department at UASLP. Her thesis focused on cloning, producing, and purifying chimeric VLPs that contain the core of the chikungunya virus and the S proteins from SARS-CoV-2.
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Ricardo Ernesto Martinez (Oct - 2022)
Miguel obtained his B.Sc. in Biology at the Science Department at UASLP. His thesis focused on understanding the entry of SARS-CoV-2 by thin-section TEM.
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Miguel Angel Coronado-Ipiña (May - 2022)
Miguel obtained his B.Sc. in Biology at the Science Department at UASLP. He is working in the High-Resolution Microscopy Section at CICSaB working on preparing and sectioning biological samples. His thesis focused on characterizing, by thin-section TEM, how ZIKV remodels the ultrastructure of human astrocytes.
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Karen A. Ortega-Palestino (February - 2022)
Karen obtained her B.Sc. in Biophysics from Science Department at UASLP. She focused on generating in vitro systems for the assembly of SARS-CoV-2 VLPs and also she is studying how the expression of the M and S proteins of SARS-CoV-2 affect the internal membranes of a cell. Her thesis was co-directed by Profs. Mauricio Comas-García and Sergio Rosales-Mendoza. The title of her thesis was "Production, purification, and characterization of SARS-CoV-2 VLPs".
Pablo Antonio González (August - 2020)
Pablo graduated from the Biology Undergraduate Program at the Science Department. The title of this thesis was "Generation of an in vitro assembly system of Chikungunya virus capsid protein" and was successfully defended in August 2020.
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Karina Rocha-Rosas (2020)
Karina got her Eng.D. Nanotechnology and Renewable Energies student at the Science Department at UASLP. She was the Technician in the High-Resolution Microscopy Section at CICSaB. She became an expert in sample preparation and thin-sectioning biological samples using our Ultramicrotome.
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