Scientific Programmes
Molecular Oncology Programme
Chromosome Dynamics Group
Ana Losada Last update May/2010
Ana Losada, born in León in 1967, joined the CNIO as Junior Group Leader of the Chromosome Dynamics Group in October 2004. She obtained her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in the laboratory of A. Villasante at the Centro de Biología Molecular “Severo Ochoa” (CSIC-UAM), Madrid. Her research aimed at identifying the DNA sequences that specify the centromeres of higher eukaryotes using Drosophila melanogaster as a model system.
In October 1996 she joined T. Hirano’s group at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, USA, as a postdoctoral fellow supported first by a fellowship from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (1997 – 1999) and later by a Special Fellowship from the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (2001 – 2004). Using the Xenopus egg cell-free system, she identified the fi rst cohesin complex from vertebrate cells. The importance of her studies on cohesin and the molecular mechanism of sister chromatid cohesion has been widely recognised in the fi eld of chromosome dynamics.
In 2003 she obtained a Research Contract from the Ramón y Cajal Programme (funded by the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia). A year later she returned to Spain to establish her own research Group at the CNIO where she has continued to work on the regulation of chromosome segregation. In 2006, her Group was selected by the New Established Team (NET) Programme of the EU-funded Epigenome Network of Excellence.
