Chemical Ecology of Pest Insects

The group has a multidisciplinary character whose two main lines of research are focused on the biomedical field and agroforestry health. The first one addresses the search for small molecular weight molecules with activity on relevant biological processes, focusing on the metabolism and functions of lipids, mainly sphingolipids, due to their crucial role in the outbreak and progress of a wide range of diseases, constituting a source of targets for the discovery of molecules of therapeutic interest and the development of tools for diagnosis and prognosis. In the agroforestry field, the group works on the development of new specific and non-polluting approaches for the control of insect pests using semiochemicals, including their structural characterization, chemical synthesis and determination of biological activity in laboratory and field conditions.