Written by Juan Carvajal Garcia, Ph.D.
I was born and grew up in Asturias, a small state the North coast of Spain. Asturias is known for its food and cider, and it has both beautiful beaches and mountains. My first contact with scientific research was as an undergraduate student at the University of Oviedo, where I studied the biosynthetic pathway of an antitumor compound.
In 2015, after graduating with a BS in Biotechnology, I moved to the United States to pursue a PhD in Genetics and Molecular Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. There, I studied how cells repair their chromosomes when they break, using mouse cells and fruit flies. In particular, I studied polymerase theta-mediated end joining (TMEJ), a chromosome break repair pathway that is essential in BRCA-deficient breast and ovarian tumors. During my time in North Carolina, I met my wife, Marcy, and we got our dog, Mango.
In 2021, I moved to Nashville to work in the lab of Dr. Houra Merrikh, in the Biochemistry Department at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Here, I am working on understanding how bacteria evolve, with a special focus on the evolution of antibiotic resistance; we hope that a detailed understanding of this process can lead to the development of drugs that stop bacteria from becoming resistant to antibiotics during the treatment of infections. I am particularly interested in how transcription and gene expression affect evolution. My research is funded by a Helen Hay Whitney foundation postdoctoral fellowship that is sponsored by the pharmaceutical company Merck.
Outside of the lab, I enjoy playing soccer and basketball, and hiking with my wife and my dog.