Julian Avila Pacheco

As a Scientist in the Broad Institute Metabolomics Platform, Dr. Pacheco develops methods for the analysis, interpretation, and annotation of metabolomics data generated using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS). A key focus of his research is discovering and characterizing novel metabolite products of human gut bacterial species associated with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Additionally, he actively collaborates in numerous metabolic profiling projects both within the institute and with the external research community. A few examples of these collaborations include:

1. the identification of disease-associated stool metabolites in the Onset of IBD project which is part of the recently completed NIH Integrative Human Microbiome Project (iHMP) consortium,
2. the identification of novel metabolites associated with survival outcomes in the cerebrospinal fluid of tuberculosis meningitis patients, and
3. the interpretation of the metabolic changes that occur during T cell differentiation, activation and proliferation.

Before joining the Broad Institute in February of 2015, he served as a research associate at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the Torii Lab in the Biology Department of the University of Washington. Originally trained as a plant biologist, his work previously focused on the role of posttranslational protein modifications (phosphorylation and ubiquitination) in cell signaling using a variety of biochemical, molecular, and genetic approaches.

During his doctoral studies at Texas A&M University he investigated apoptosis in response to the bacterial pathogen Pseudomonas syringae in tomato plants and studied the interactors of Adi3, a protein kinase that negatively regulates cell death in tomatoes.