Background

I studied a Biology degree (University of Barcelona). I started my career as an experimentalist in a plants molecular biology lab. I moved to computational biology for my PhD, which I completed under the supervision of Prof Modesto Orozco and Dr Xavier de la Cruz. After my PhD, I joined the Thornton group at the EBI. I moved to the University of Manchester in 2009, where I have worked with Prof Simon Lovell, Prof David Robertson and Dr Simon Whelan.


Research Interests

Complex systems can only be understood through the relationships established by their constituent members. Protein-protein interactions are involved in all biological processes. Thus, protein interactions, and the functiosn they give rise to, are excellent candidates for understanding the consequences of genomic varation. Proteins must only bind their cognate partners in order to avoid detrimental effects. Hence, any process that changes the composition of the proteome may affect the network of protein interactions.
During my career I studied 1) the effect of alternative splicing and single amino acid replacements; 2) the yeasts S. cerevisiae and C. glabrata interfaces; and, 3) the relationship between protein-protein interactions, genetic interactions and protein variability. Currently, I am developing a ML-based approach for testing coevolution hypotheses within and between proteins.


Publications

2013

  • Talavera D, Robertson DL, Lovell SC.
    The role of gene duplications and protein interactions in mediating essentiality.
    PLoS ONE (In press).
  • Talavera D, Robertson DL, Lovell SC.
    Alternative splicing and protein interaction data sets.
    Nature Biotechnology.
  • Talavera D, Sheoran R, Lovell SC .
    Analysis of genetic interactions network proves that alternatively spliced genes are more functionally versatile.
    PLoS ONE.

2012

  • Talavera D, Williams SG, Norris MG, Robertson DL, Lovell SC.
    Evolvability of yeast protein-protein interaction interfaces.
    J Mol Biol.
  • Carretero-Paulet L, Cairó A, Talavera D, Saura A, Imperial S, Rodríguez-Concepción M, Campos N, Boronat A.
    Functional and evolutionary analysis of DXL1, a non- essential gene encoding a 1-deoxy-D-xylulose 5-phosphate synthase like protein in Ara- bidopsis.
    Gene (available online).

2011

  • Talavera D, Robertson DL, Lovell SC.
    Characterization of protein-protein interaction interfaces from a single species.
    PLoS ONE.
  • Pons C, Talavera D, de la Cruz X, Orozco M, Fernández-Recio J.
    Scoring by Inter- molecular Pairwise Propensities of Exposed Residues (SIPPER): A new efficient potential for protein-protein docking.
    J Chem Inf Model.

2010

  • Talavera D, Taylor MS, Thornton JM.
    The (non)malignancy of cancerous amino acidic substitutions.
    Proteins.

2009

  • Talavera D, Orozco M, de la Cruz X.
    Alternative splicing of transcription factors' genes: beyond the increase of proteome diversity.
    Comp Funct Genomics.
  • Talavera D, Laskowski RA, Thornton JM.
    WSsas: a web service for the annotation of functional residues through structural homologues.
    Bioinformatics.
  • Reeves GA, Talavera D, Thornton JM.
    Genome and proteome annotation: organization, interpretation and integration.
    J R Soc Interface.

2007

  • Talavera D, Hospital A, Orozco M, de la Cruz X.
    A procedure for identifying homologous alternative splicing events.
    BMC Bioinformatics.
  • Talavera D, Vogel C, Orozco M, Teichmann SA, de la Cruz X.
    The (in)dependence of alternative splicing and gene duplication.
    PLoS Comput Biol.

2006

  • Talavera D, Morreale A, Meyer T, Hospital A, Ferrer-Costa C, Gelpi JL, de la Cruz X, Soliva R, Luque FJ, Orozco M.
    A fast method for the determination of fractional contributions to solvation in proteins.
    Protein Sci.

2004

  • Villalobos E, Santos M, Talavera D, Rodríguez-Falcón M, Torné JM.
    Molecular cloning and characterization of a maize transglutaminase complementary DNA.
    Gene.
  • Valenzuela A, Talavera D, Orozco M, de la Cruz X.
    Alternative splicing mechanisms for the modulation of protein function: conservation between human and other species.
    J Mol Biol.