Agromayor Group

The Agromayor laboratory uses a multidisciplinary approach involving the latest imaging, biochemical and genetic techniques to study how cells reorganise their cytoskeleton and plasma membrane during infection and cell division.

During the last few years, our research has focused on how viruses manipulate and exploit the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) machinery to promote their replication. Our work in this area has revealed a mechanism to functionally tailor the ESCRTs for different cellular processes by binding differentially to components of the machinery depending on the required activity. This way, the same cellular machinery can catalyse the scission of thin membranous stalks present in the final stages of topologically equivalent membrane remodelling processes such as enveloped virus budding, endosomal sorting of ubiquitinated membrane cargo and cytokinesis.