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Dr. Munoz received his Ph.D. at the University of Murcia (Spain). His main goal during the Doctoral Thesis was to find the molecular basis, through enzyme kinetics and structural enzymology, of the suicide inactivation and irreversible inactivation of polyphenol oxidase, when it acts on its monophenolic and diphenolic substrates. Also, these inhibitions were demonstrated when the enzyme acted on non-natural substrates like NADH, ascorbic acid, or tetrahydrobiopterin. With this Ph.D., Dr. Munoz obtained the award “Juan Abello” for the best Ph.D. in Biochemistry in Spain in 2012, from the Royal Academy of Doctors in Spain. After the Ph.D., he started as a postdoc in the lab of Prof. Harry J. Gilbert (Newcastle University, UK) to further study the catalytic mechanism of different types of enzymes using modern enzymology techniques like X-ray crystallography, mutagenesis, cloning, and circular dichroism. During this period, he tried to understand how the commensal bacteria from the human gut use different polysaccharides present in our diets, such as arabinogalactan or alpha-mannan, dissecting the molecular details of the pathways involved in the process. In the meanwhile, he was fascinated with the human gut microbiota, and he continued to study the behavior of this ecosystem and how to interact with different microbes to degrade dietary glycans. He has published four papers in high impact factor journals such as Nature, Proceedings of Natural Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Nature Microbiology based on the research during this period. After his postdoctoral stage, in 2018, he moved to Northumbria University to start his independent research group to understand how different members of the gut microbiota interact to degrade complex glycans, in a process called cross-feeding. Therefore, he has been able to dissect the interactions between Bacteroides and Bifidobacterium species when act on dietary arabinogalactans. Dr. Munoz’s research work mainly focuses on the enzymology of the gut microbiota when degrades multiple polysaccharides. In this metabolic process, multiple Glycoside hydrolases, polysaccharide lyases, or carbohydrate esterases are involved and it is exciting and important to understand their behavior to understand the overall degradative process. This approach enables Dr. Munoz to design new nutraceutical strategies.

Enzymology, Gut microbiota, Glycoside hydrolase, Protein engineering