Ana Rengifo-Gallego

I am a biologist, researcher, and PhD student in Sciences—Biology with an emphasis in applied biology and molecular biology at the Universidad del Valle in Cali City, Colombia, South America. I have experience in basic research on microbial interactions between hosts (i.e., plants, algae, and animals) and their microbiomes.

Through my experience as a researcher and teacher, I have acquired technical skills in molecular biology, microbiology, bioinformatics, and experimental design, which allow me to carry out types of research such as data mining and experimental investigation simultaneously. This combination of skills allows me to evaluate the biological problem as an interactive phenomenon, allowing me to identify a robust set of variables to be examined simultaneously in a single experimental time.

The first biological problem that I approached was in my undergraduate thesis project, in which we explored why a heavy metal-accumulating red algae (Bostrychia calliptera) incorporated the metal into its cytosol when it was not naturally bioavailable. Then a bacterial consortium was identified as a contributor to this process in biofilm form, helped by the polysaccharides that the algae exude into the seawater.

At the Universidad del Valle, I am currently working on the research project 'Observational study of gut bacteria of Phyllostomidae bats and their relationship with viruses causing zoonotic diseases', in which we propose a two-phase study (data mining and experimental). Our hypothesis is that gut bacteria have a relationship with viral immune control in bats. Due to the gaps on this topic, this research addresses for the first time, exploring the interaction through the analysis of previous results (meta-analysis) and experimentally evaluate the link in Artibeus lituratus and the rabies virus. In this second phase, the Experiment.com platform is crucial to its development.

September 2023