Martinez Lab is a cutting-edge research Laboratory dedicated to advancing scientific knowledge and conducting innovative research in the field of RNA and human diseases.

    For the last seven decades, most biomedical research has been focused on the importance of mutations in genes (DNA) whose final product is a functional protein (the molecular process, also known as the "Dogma of Molecular Biology," is: DNA -> RNA -> Protein). However, after the human genome was sequenced in 2003, researchers found that only 1.5% of our DNA ends up producing proteins, while most of our DNA (80%) only produces RNAs. This newly discovered “universe” of functional RNAs called “non-coding RNAs” (meaning that they do not code or help produce proteins) contains hundreds of thousands of molecules, prompting researchers to call them the “dark matter” of biology.
 
     Recent studies, including ours, have shown that non-coding RNAs play an essential role in human cancers and viral infections, opening the door for the development of new drugs against these molecules, use of them as therapeutic agents, or molecular markers for prevention and diagnosis.
 
     The main interest in the Martinez Lab is to understand the importance of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), such as microRNAs (miRNAs), long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs), non-coding circular RNAs (circRNAs), and glycosylated RNAs (glycoRNAs) in the process of carcinogenesis as well as viral infections.