José María Valpuesta, biography note.
José María Valpuesta obtained his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry at the University of the Basque
Country, Spain in 1985. Later he worked at the Centro de Biología Molecular (CSIC/Madrid, Spain). In 2003
he obtained the professor tile and started working at the Centro Nacional de Biotecnología. In 2006-7 held
position of Vice-director and 2007-13 director of Centro Nacional de Biotecnología, one of the most
important centers of molecular biology in Spain. Between 2005 and 2009 prof. Valpuesta held position of
President of the Spanish Microscopy Society. Currently he is head of the Macromolecular Structure
Department of the National Centre of Biotechnology.
As the researcher prof. Valpuesta is co-author of 137 indexed papers (among others in Nature,
Science, Nat Struct. Mol. Biol., Nat Cell Biol, Mol. Cell, PNAS USA, EMBO J.), in the field of membrane
structure, protein folding, molecular chaperones, macromolecular complexes and electron microscopy.
Citation Hirsch index: 42 (~5700 citations). Author of 1 book and 5 chapters in collective books. His
achievements were honored by awards granted by Spanish Ministry of Education, Bruker Prize of the
Biophysical Spanish Society, European Microscopy Society. In addition, prof. Valpuesta is the member of
“Faculty of 1000” and “Academia Europaea”. He worked as reviewer for National Science Foundation
(USA), Israel Science Foundation, Human Frontiers Science Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome
Trust Foundation, Cancer Research UK, Argentinian Science Foundation (FONDECIT) and several Spanish
Funding agencies.
Prof. Valpuesta as teacher gives lectures about Biomedicine, Molecular and Cell Biology and
Biophysics at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. Moreover, occasionally he gives lectures at University of
Crete (Greece), Lisbon and Porto (Portugal), Santiago (Chile). Until 1995 he was supervisor of 10
postdocks, 15 Ph.D students and 6 Master students.
During last 10 years prof. Valpuesta has helped to establish cryoelectron microscopy at the Centro
Nacional de Biotecnología (CNB), and have contributed to forming a core of seven groups at the institute
that use this and other techniques, complemented by image processing tools, to structurally characterize a
large variety of biological specimens. This community of electron microscopists is perhaps unique in the
world and certainly in Spain, where his group is a reference. The most influential part of his work deals with
the structural and functional characterization of various chaperones, which has helped to structurally confirm
the existence of a network of interactions between different chaperones that make the protein folding
pathway more efficient. He has published more than 60 papers over the last 10 years, some in such journals
as Science, Mol. Cell, Nat Cell Biol, Nat Struct Mol Biol, J Exp Med, PNAS USA, and EMBO J. Seven of
these papers were selected by the “Faculty of 1000”; his work has received more than 2500 citations since
2009.
He also pioneered in Spain the use of single-molecule techniques such as optical tweezers, which have been
used to study the forces involved in the function of different protein and nucleic acid molecules.
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