Scientist

Partial view of the gene tree with the amino-acid / nucleotide recognition code described in Camas et al. (2010).
Partial view of the gene tree with the amino-acid / nucleotide recognition code described in Camas et al. (2010).

I'm currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of prof. Eric Alm at MIT. My work is focused on the environmental and genetic determinants that could be shaping the human microbiome, microorganisms inhabiting the human body, and the evolutionary scenarios of microbiome assembly.

 

I'm also characterizing amino-acid/nucleotide recognition codes that could define precise blueprints to reprogram the specificity of bacterial transcriptional factors -proteins that control the synthesis of other proteins.

Scientific education

Although I graduated in Theoretical Physics at the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid (Spain), a brief stay at the Centro de Astrobiologia (CAB, a center in Spain associated to the NASA Astrobiology Institute) started to push my transition to Systems Biology.

 

I received my Ph.D. in Physical Sciences from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) for a multi-scale work within the subfield of Systems Biology concerning the network motifs, the basic building blocks of transcriptional networks in bacteria. My work, that was supervised by prof. Juan Poyatos and prof. Jesus Blazquez, combined experimental microbiology genetics (the redesign of small genetic circuits in vivo) with bioinformatics and mathematical modelling. My Ph. D. thesis (in Spanish) can be found here.

 

The transcriptional network of Escherichia coli, as assembled in Camas et al. (2008). One of the network motifs is enhanced in red; this motif is an example of SIM (Single Input Module), in which only one single protein controls many others.
The transcriptional network of Escherichia coli, as assembled in Camas et al. (2008). One of the network motifs is enhanced in red; this motif is an example of SIM (Single Input Module), in which only one single protein controls many others.

Selected publications

Hong Xue, Otto X. Cordero, Francisco M. Camas, William L. Trimble , Folker Meyer, Eduardo P. C. Rocha, Julien Guglielmini (2015). Eco-evolutionary dynamics of episomes among ecologically cohesive bacterial populations. mBio 6(3):e00552-15 [link]

 

Camas FM, Alm EJ and Poyatos JF (2010). Local gene regulation details a recognition code within the LacI transcriptional factor family. PLoS Computational Biology, 6, 11, e1000989 [link]

 

Camas FM and Poyatos JF (2008). What determines the assembly of transcriptional network motifs in Escherichia coli? PLoS ONE, 3, 11, e3657 [link]

 

Camas FM, Blázquez J and Poyatos, JF (2006). Autogenous and nonautogenous control of response in a genetic network. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), 103, 12718 [link]