DrVirginia Tajadura-Ortega

Virginia Tajadura is a Glycobiologist and microbiologist and got her PhD in Genetics and Molecular Microbiology at the University of Salamanca, Spain.

Virginia moved to Imperial College in September 2019 to work in the Glycosciences laboratory as part of the March of Dimes (MOD) European Preterm Birth Research Centre programme. Her research is focused on understanding the interactions of host glycans of the female reproductive tract with commensal and pathogenic vaginal microbiota that occur during pregnancy and their impact on preterm birth.

Glycans are made up of sugars that are arranged to form molecular epitopes, that can be specifically recognised by antibodies, lectins and carbohydrate binding proteins present in mammalian and microbial cells. In animal cells glycans form the bulk of the glycocalyx and are the main component of mucus in human secretions, including the cervicovaginal fluid (CVF). Glycans constitute the first point of contact in many cell-cell interactions including host-microbiota interactions. Host glycans modulate dynamics of microbial colonisation, including during infection, serving as attachment and adhesion sites as well as nutrient sources shaping the ecological relationships that determine microbial composition in microbiomes. Microbes can modify host glycans to avoid immune surveillance during infection, to induce immune tolerance through molecular mimicry and to influence bacteria-bacteria interactions.

In my current position I have implemented glycan microarray technology and an optimised work pipeline that can be used for broad glycan binding studies with whole bacteria from microbiomes, using both patient derived bacteria and sequence-defined glycan microarrays hosted in the Carbohydrate Microarray Facility at Imperial College within the Glycosciences laboratory.