How autotransporter proteins mediate bacterial interactions

Begoña Heras completed her Bachelor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Zaragoza (Spain). She obtained her PhD degree in Organic Chemistry from The University of Navarra (Spain). This led to a postdoctoral position at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK), an international centre of excellence in plant and microbial science where she developed an interest in structure-function relationships of proteins involved in host-microbe interactions. Then she joined the Institute for Molecular Bioscience (University of Queensland) as a research officer where she worked on the structure-function relationships of  bacterial foldases  required for the production of a wide range of virulence factors.  In 2012 she moved to the Department of Biochemistry and Genetics, La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science (LIMS) after receiving a LIMS fellowship to set up her own research group. In 2013, she received an ARC Future Fellowship to study the structure-function relationships in  virulence proteins involved in bacterial pathogenesis.

Research interests

• Bacterial virulence factors: structure and function

Her research focuses on investigating the structure and function of bacterial virulence factors.