Users at a Glance

Dr. Manuel Quirós Asensio works at the Instituto de Ciencias de la Vid y del Vino (Science Institute of Vine and Wine) in Logroño, Spain
What three words would your colleagues use to describe you?
I guess they would describe me as helpful, responsible, and meticulous.
Where and how did you spend your last vacation?
I made a road trip for seven days around Jutland, the continental part of Denmark. I had the opportunity to discover some ‘hidden’ but beautiful places like the towns of Skagen and Blåvand, bigger cities like Århus and Aalborg and enjoy amazing landscapes like those around the largest migrating coastal dune in Europe, Råbjerg Mile.
What do you especially like about your job?
In my opinion, there are two things that make scientific research an amazing task. Firstly, there are just a very few jobs that give you the chance to learn new things, year after year. New projects demand the implementation of new experiments that might involve new methodologies, innovative techniques and – in microbiology – even the use of different microorganisms.

Having the chance to meet new colleagues, interact, and exchange knowledge with them in congresses around the world is the second best thing I love about working in science.

How did you come to know DASGIP?
After finishing my PhD, I worked as a PostDoc in Jens Nielsen’s group at the Center for Microbial Biotechnology (Technical University of Denmark), a reference research center in fermentation technology. Prof. Nielsen moved his group to the Chalmers University of Technology (Göteborg, Sweden) and equipped the labs with DASGIP fermentors.

When I joined Ramón Gonzalez’s group and we set up the lab in Logroño, I contacted my former colleagues for recommendations on fermentation systems and they told me how pleased they were with DASGIP Parallel Bioreactor systems.

In your opinion, what is the most exciting challenge in wine biotechnology at the moment?
During the last years, different challenges in biological sciences have been tackled using extensive analysis tools, as Omics – Genomics, Transcriptomics, Proteomics, Metabolomics, Fluxomics.

Wine-making is a good example of a complex system where several yeast strains of different species together with lactic acid bacteria and moulds exert a complicated metabolic effect on an entangled medium such as grape juice. Together with other physico-chemical phenomena, all these physiological interactions and metabolic activities are responsible for the sensorial and organoleptic properties of wine. In my opinion, a holistic integration of the extensive studies of the grape-vines, Saccharomyces cerevisiae and other involved microorganisms will enormously contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the whole wine-making.

Manuel Quiros was interviewed by DASGIP on 25 May, 2010.