Isabel M. López-Lara studied biology at the University of Granada, in Granada , Spain . She received her doctoral title from the University of Granada in 1992 with the work "Genetic and biochemical studies of surface polysaccharides of Rhizobium sp. GRH2" that she carried out in the Estación Experimental del Zaidín, Granada , Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) under the supervision of Nicolás Toro García. From 1993 to 1995, she did postdoctoral work in Leiden, The Netherlands at the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences with Herman P. Spaink on the "Molecular basis of the rhizobium-legume interaction" with fellowships from the Spanish Ministry and the European Community. Subsequently, as an EMBO fellow she did postdoctoral work in the Department of Biotechnology at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, working on "Lipid biosynthesis in rhizobia" with Otto Geiger. She currently holds the position of Professor (Investigador Titular A) at the Center for Genomic Sciences (formerly the Research Center for Nitrogen Fixation ) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (Cuernavaca) which she joined in 1999. Together with her group, she works on the project "Post-genomic studies in Sinorhizobium meliloti directed towards the discovery of new biosynthetic pathways related to ketides". She is Associate Editor for the Journal Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions.

Genetics