The GLP-1 receptor is a protein that responds to GLP-1, a naturally occurring hormone that regulates blood sugar levels and the feeling of satiety. For this reason, it is a target of some of the most advanced and widely used treatments for type 2 diabetes and obesity, such as Ozempic. Understanding how the function of this receptor may vary as a result of genetic changes is therefore particularly important.

Naturally, each person may carry different genetic variants of the GLP-1 receptor, known as GLP1R variants. An individual’s risk of developing type 2 diabetes, as well as their response to treatments, may vary depending on the presence of one of these variants. Until now, determining whether a specific variant actually altered receptor function required complex laboratory studies.

This situation could change thanks to the work of a team from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRIB) and the Institut Cochin (CNRS/Inserm) in Paris. The researchers have developed a new computational method that can be applied to precision medicine and improves the ability to predict these effects. The method, known as GPCR^VP, is described in a study published in the journal Diabetologia.

The new method combines existing artificial intelligence-based predictors, including AlphaMissense and REVEL, with information about the receptor’s three-dimensional structure, membrane characteristics, and molecular dynamics. During its evaluation, GPCR^VP showed greater agreement with laboratory measurements and reduced false-positive predictions by approximately 78% in the validation datasets compared with AlphaMissense.

At the same time, the researchers successfully used the new tool to predict the functional impact of 174 additional human GLP1R variants.

As Dr. Jana Selent, coordinator of the GPCR Drug Discovery Research Group at HMRIB, explains: “These results suggest that incorporating the specific biological characteristics of this family of G protein-coupled receptors can improve the interpretation of human genetic variation.”

Marta López Balastegui, the study’s first author, adds: “Approaches such as GPCR^VP could help researchers and clinical professionals better understand how each person’s genetic variation may influence GLP-1 receptor function and potentially contribute to more personalized strategies for managing diabetes and obesity.”

Although the tool was initially validated using the GLP-1 receptor, the methodological framework developed by the researchers can be applied to the entire family of these receptors, as well as to other membrane proteins involved in human diseases.

Reference article

Lopez-Balastegui, M., Lian, S., Gao, W. et al. The GPCR^VP score reliably predicts the impact of GLP1R human variants on receptor function. Diabetologia (2026).

La entrada New computational tool to improve prediction of the genetic impact on diabetes and obesity se publicó primero en GRIB.

La entrada ORFeus officially starts, and recruitment for all fifteen doctoral researcher positions is now open: apply now! se publicó primero en GRIB.

The meeting, focused on advancing knowledge of microproteins and their biomedical and biotechnological applications, brought together experts from around the world working across diverse areas of microprotein biology.

During the symposium, Albà, presented the latest research from her group on the evolution of microproteins using yeast as a model system. The work has recently been published as a preprint on bioRxiv and provides new insights into the evolutionary origins and diversification of this emerging class of proteins. The symposium served as a platform for sharing cutting-edge discoveries and fostering international collaborations in this rapidly evolving field.

The event, titled “Decoding Microproteins: From Basic Biology to Biotechnological Innovations”, highlighted recent advances in understanding microprotein function, evolution and applications, reinforcing the importance of interdisciplinary research efforts in this area.

Related links

• bioRxiv preprint on microprotein evolution
• Symposium webpage

La entrada Mar Albà showcases GRIB research at leading international microprotein symposium se publicó primero en GRIB.

La entrada Dr. Qiuyan Chen Visits GRIB to Discuss New Insights into GPCR Signaling and Arrestin Activation se publicó primero en GRIB.

05/08/2026

On 30 July, Mireia Vallès-Colomer, researcher and member of the teaching staff at Pompeu Fabra UniversitY and leader of The Microbiome Research Group at GRIB, was presented with National Research Award from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities. Vallès-Colomer received the Margarita Salas Award, which recognizes outstanding research in biology by researchers under the age of 40.

According to the Ministry, the award presented to Mireia Vallès-Colomer, director of the Microbiome Research Group in the Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS) and GRIB, acknowledges her “research linking the gut microbiome to mental health”. She also, remarked that the award has given her “a renewed burst of energy […]. Having our work recognized gives meaning to the immense amount of time and effort we devote to it and confirms that the seemingly risky decision to return home and continue conducting research at the highest level was indeed correct.”

The young researcher, who has led her research group in MELIS-UPF since 2023 after completing her education in Leuven (Belgium) and Trento (Italy), added: “It is an honour to receive an award that bears the name of a leading figure such as Margarita Salas. At the same time, the fact I am the first woman to receive it shows that there is still much progress to be made.”

About Mireia

Mireia Vallès-Colomer is a tenure-track lecturer and principal investigator at Pompeu Fabra University (UPF), where she heads the Microbiome Research Group in MELIS-UPF. With degrees in Microbiology and Computational Biology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (Belgium), her research centres on the role of the human microbiome in mental health and the mechanisms underlying its transmission between individuals.

As a PhD student in the laboratory of Dr Raes at VIB–KU Leuven (Belgium), she led the first population-based study linking the composition and function of the gut microbiome to anxiety and depression. This research, published in Nature Microbiology (2019), systematically characterized the production and degradation of neuroactive compounds using metagenomic data and was singled out by Nature Milestones 2019 as a key contribution to human microbiome research. Later, as an EMBO postdoctoral researcher in the laboratory of Dr Segata at the University of Trento (Italy), she demonstrated the multigenerational transmission of the gut microbiome within families (Nature Microbiology, 2022) and led the first large-scale characterization of person-to-person transmission networks of oral and gut microbiomes (Nature, 2023), establishing a population-level framework to investigate the social transmission of microbes.

She currently leads a team of seven researchers focused on developing and applying computational and statistical methods to analyse the relationship between microbiome composition, social transmission dynamics and mental health. Her scientific output has amassed over 15,000 citations, and, in 2025, she was recognized by Clarivate as a Highly Cited Researcher, placing her in the top 1% of the most cited researchers worldwide.

You can read more about it here

La entrada Mireia Vallès-Colomer honoured with National Research Award se publicó primero en GRIB.

Hospital del Mar Research Institute is participating in this European project, which aims to advance knowledge of the functions of the proteins that make up the so-called dark proteome. Led by the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in the Netherlands, it will train fifteen PhD students, who will focus their research on this field.

The European ORFeus programme aims to boost research into the field of the dark proteome, a group of proteins whose existence was unknown until recently. It will do so by providing training to fifteen PhD students, who will focus their research on this field. Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRIB) is the only institution in Spain participating in the project, through the research group led by Dr Mar Albà, ICREA Research Professor and Director of the Biomedical Informatics Research Programme at HMRIB, which will host one of the researchers.

Cancer cell expressing microprotein (colored in red)

The dark proteome regulates processes in tumour cells and other diseases and may play an important role in the development of new treatments, such as immunotherapy. With fifteen PhD candidates dedicated to studying this previously unknown group of proteins, the project is expected to achieve an increasingly deeper understanding of this research field and its potential applications in new therapies.

The researchers will work in fifteen research groups across different European countries. In addition to their research activities, the PhD candidates will follow a joint training programme. They will receive both scientific and professional training and will undertake placements in participating companies. This will allow the most promising discoveries to be translated more rapidly into clinical practice. Collaboration is a central element of the programme.

The ORFeus programme will begin in October with the recruitment of students and will run for four years. It is coordinated by the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology in the Netherlands and involves 26 international partners. ORFeus is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, grant agreement No. 101309891.

La entrada ORFeus, boosting research into the dark proteome se publicó primero en GRIB.

Four researchers in the fields of genomics and bioinformatics will provide insights into this topic. The speakers will be:

Dr. Mar Albà; ICREA Research Professor, Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRI):
“The Dark Matter of Peptideins”

Dr. Tamara Perteghella; Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF):
“ncRNAs, a Continuously Expanding Universe”

Dr. Josep Casacuberta; CSIC Research Professor, Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG):
“Centromeres and Repetitive Sequences: Filling the Gaps with Long-Read Sequencing”

Dr. Cristian Cañestro; University of Barcelona (UB), Biodiversity Research Institute (IRBio):
“Gene Loss and Gain: The Death and Birth of the Stars in the Genome’s Dark Matter”

The talks will be followed by a round-table discussion with the speakers, moderated by Dr. Josep F. Abril (UB/IBUB).

The event is open to the public and will take place in the Aula Magna of the Faculty of Biology at the University of Barcelona.

#25APGH

Event details

Mini-symposium: Genome Dark Matter
Date: 15 June
Venue: University of Barcelona
More information: https://web.ub.edu/ca/web/25-anys-genoma/w/minisimposi-25apgh-la-mat%C3%A8ria-fosca-del-genoma-

La entrada Mar Albà to participate in the “Genome Dark Matter” mini-symposium celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Human Genome se publicó primero en GRIB.

An international study published in the journal Nature has designated a subset of the so-called dark proteins – proteins with no known function – as peptideins. Characterising them opens the door to studying them and analysing their functions.

The TransCODE consortium, of which the Hospital del Mar Research Institute is the only research centre in Spain to be a member, has just published a new article that advances knowledge of the so-called dark genome, a part of the human genome that has not been studied and whose function is unknown. The journal Nature publishes the study, in which it designates thousands of previously unannotated proteins as peptideins.

Dr Mar Albà, ICREA professor and director of the Biomedical Informatics Research Programme (GRIB) at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute (HMRIB), is one of the authors of the study. She highlights the importance of analysing this part of the genome, noting that “some of these proteins may have important functions in the cell. In addition, even for those that are not functional, they are a reservoir of new proteins from an evolutionary point of view”.

The researchers started from a list of more than 7,000 DNA sequences suspected of coding for dark proteins. They have been studied and identified thanks to the development of specific techniques to sequence the RNA fragments protected by ribosomes, and have been validated by proteomics. These are proteins of recent origin from an evolutionary point of view, very small and with no known function. For all these reasons, they are not included in databases.

The new term, peptideins, is a combination of the words peptide, a short amino-acid fragment, and protein. Its creation allows them to be included in databases, thus facilitating possible new studies of their functions. In this regard, Dr Albà explains that “one line of research we want to pursue based on these results is to see which of them show patterns of phylogenetic conservation that indicate functionality. To do this, we plan to compare the dark proteomes of closely related species”. Some of these peptideins have been linked to diseases, such as childhood cancers, and to basic cellular functions.

Reference article

Deutsch, E.W., Kok, L.W., Mudge, J.M. et al. Expanding the human proteome with microproteins and peptideins. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10459-x

La entrada A new study names part of the human genome se publicó primero en GRIB.

• An international study involving researchers from the Hospital del Mar Research Institute reveals a key interaction between two proteins that are fundamental in tumour development

• To achieve this, molecular modelling and artificial intelligence techniques were used, revealing for the first time a new structural model that describes a previously unknown cell-signalling mechanism

• The research opens the door to designing drugs that act on the interaction between the two proteins, thereby improving current cancer treatments

An international research consortium, led by the University of Utah School of Medicine in Salt Lake City, United States, has discovered a new pathway that could enable the development of new cancer treatments. The study, published in the journal Nature Structural & Molecular Biology, involved researchers from institutions in the United States, Germany, Switzerland and Spain. Tomasz Maciej Stepniewski, co-first author of the study, and Jana Selent, who leads the G protein-coupled receptor-based drug discovery research group at the Hospital del Mar Research Institute, are the only authors from a Spanish centre.

In this study, the researchers used molecular modelling techniques and artificial intelligence tools for the first time, allowing them to design experiments and resolve the structure of the proteins studied. Specifically, they examined the relationship between a cellular receptor protein, Smoothened, which is involved in the development of tumours such as basal cell carcinoma, medulloblastoma and some pancreatic and lung cancers, and the protein PKA, or protein kinase A. The study discovered how Smoothened blocks the action of PKA, whose function is to help control cell growth. When this happens, cells can grow more easily and cause tumours.

“This is an important advance because it redefines the way scientists understand how cellular receptors function, revealing a new mechanism by which these receptors can transmit signals inside the cell”, explains Stepniewski. Thanks to the use of advanced artificial intelligence models, the researchers were able to analyse and predict molecular-level interactions between the proteins, revealing a previously unknown interaction mechanism. “This finding reveals a distinct signalling mechanism, in which the receptor not only activates reactions indirectly, but also establishes direct contact with a key protein in the pathway”, he adds.

Treatments focused on the direct interaction between proteins

Current treatments that target Smoothened aim to completely deactivate this protein, which can cause side effects or lead them to lose effectiveness over time. Their design was based on static receptor structures and experimental assays. By understanding the mechanism of direct interaction between this receptor and PKA, researchers can “design new and more precise treatments that restore the cell’s natural control capacity instead of completely deactivating it”, according to Jana Selent. This discovery opens the door to more effective therapies that act directly on this interaction and have fewer side effects for patients. In other words, “a new path for the development of cancer drugs”.

The team responsible for the study believes that its conclusions may be applicable to other receptors involved in tumour development. The next step will be to develop new molecules capable of acting on this mechanism and test them in preclinical models. To support this work, the researchers have made the models they created available free of charge to other scientists and companies.

Reference article

Steiner, W.P., Iverson, N., Liu, G. et al. Structural mechanism for noncanonical GPCR signaling in the Hedgehog pathway. Nat Struct Mol Biol (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41594-026-01800-z

Further information

Communication Department, Hospital del Mar Research Institute/Hospital del Mar: Marta Calsina 93 3160680 mcalsina@researchmar.net, David Collantes 600402785 dcollantes@hospitaldelmar.cat

La entrada A new pathway for developing cancer drugs discovered se publicó primero en GRIB.

Organised by the Neurogenomics Group, the session will focus on recent advances in the analysis and integration of multi-omics data, with applications to brain development, neurodegeneration, and complex biological systems.

The programme will include three sessions:

• 14:30 – NeMO Analytics and neocortical development using stem cell models. 
• 15:30 – Using NeMO Analytics to explore public multi-omics datasets (no coding required)
• 16:30 – Structured Joint Decomposition to integrate multiple related multi-omics datasets (advanced session for coders)

The workshop will take place in the Marie Curie Room and is open to researchers across the PRBB community.

As a joint programme of the Hospital del Mar Research Institute and Pompeu Fabra University, GRIB brings together multidisciplinary expertise in bioinformatics and computational biology to better understand human health and disease through data-driven approaches.

This event represents an excellent opportunity to engage with state-of-the-art tools for multi-omics data exploration and to foster collaboration within the PRBB scientific community.

La entrada GRIB hosts guest researcher Carlo Colantuoni for a seminar and workshop on multi-omics data analysis se publicó primero en GRIB.