Dr. Marina Ezcurra Ph.D. – Exploring the gut microbiota and brain axis in health, disease, and aging
Explore the Gut Microbiota Brain Axis in Health, Disease and Aging – Dr. Marina Ezcurra Ph.D. University of Kent
Dr. Marina Ezcurra (https://marinaezcurralab.com/) is a Lecturer in the Biology of Aging, and NeuroBiology, at the School of BioSciences, at the University of Kent, UK (https://www.kent.ac.uk/biosciences/people/2081/ezcurra-marina).
Dr. Ezcurra earned her PhD in 2011 from the Karolinska institute. Her PhD research was a collaboration between Karolinska Institute and Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where she investigated neural circuits and behaviour using C. elegans.
During her PhD Dr. Ezcurra discovered extra-synaptic mechanisms through which nutritional status modulates nociceptive sensations, including neuro-peptidergic, and dopaminergic signals. She then did a postdoctoral research project on aging at University College London with Dr. David Gems.
Dr. Ezcurra, during her postdoctoral work, developed methods for monitoring the development of age-related diseases, in-vivo, in C.elegans. This led to the discovery of an unknown process called Intestinal Biomass Conversion. This mechanism allows the C.elegans intestines to be broken down into vast quantities of yolk. This results in poly-morbidity, and even mortality, in aging nematodes. This study shows that aging, and age-related illnesses can be caused by the run-on of wild type gene function rather than random molecular damage.
The Wellcome Trust, Royal Society and The Wellcome Trust are funding Dr. Ezcurra’s current research on the effects of host-microbiome interaction on host aging.
Dr. Ezcurra serves as a member of the trustee board of The British Society of Research on Aging.
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