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Cristina Vallejo
Malaga
Friday, 6 December 2024, 12:37
It doesn’t get more ‘Malagueño’ than this, yet it couldn’t be more cosmopolitan either. At just 34 years old, he has already travelled the world and, this November, published an article in the prestigious Science journal, with his name as lead author, which is no small achievement. He explains that “fewer than 1% of scientists manage to publish in a journal like that.”
Cristian Prieto García was born in Pasaje de Mármoles and his family worked at the iconic seafood restaurant Casa Flores, in the heart of the district of El Perchel, near Malaga’s main railway station. His grandfather saw the birth of the business, his father spent many years juggling work at the bar with his job as an orderly at the Hospital Civil, and it was his uncle who was there to witness the bar’s closure when it was demolished.
As a child, Cristian would often run around the restaurant and play with the children of other local bar owners. He went to San José de la Montaña, a school in Malaga’s La Trinidad district, and then to the Santa María de la Victoria secondary school in Gamarra. He later studied veterinary science at the University of Cordoba, spending his final year in London, where his interest in research was sparked. He then completed a Master’s degree Universidad Complutense in Madrid before moving to Germany to pursue his PhD and postdoctoral research.
“I’ve always been very curious about research; I wasn’t the brightest in the class, but I was always in the upper-middle range. Watching documentaries, I found out that there was something called a PhD for discovering things. But I didn’t go straight into science; instead I focused on something more practical. That’s why I studied veterinary medicine, because I could have a job; I’ve always liked animals. But in my final year of university, in London, I started doing research. Then I went to Germany because it’s much easier to find a research group and secure funding there than in Spain,” he explained to SUR from Frankfurt, where he lives. In fact, two other people from Malaga who saw their work published in the journals Science and Nature, David Posé Padilla and Carmen Martín Pizarro, also did so from Germany. Manuel López did the same, but from the United States.
Cristian works in Germany with Croatian Ivan Dikic, Director of the Institute of Biochemistry II at Goethe University in Frankfurt. Dikic’s name appears last on the author list of the article published in Science. “The first author leads the coordination and the writing of the paper, while the last author secures the funding and oversees the progress,” Cristian explained, clarifying the roles of both his supervisor and himself.
“It’s been more than five years of work by a team of forty authors from Japan, China, Germany and France. It’s been a truly multidisciplinary endeavour,” he said, highlighting the contributions from fields such as maths, technology and biomedicine.
Cristian described the tough initial stages of the publication process: first, the research must be deemed worthy of publication; then it undergoes peer review by specialists in the field, who suggest revisions and improvements. Once the necessary changes are made, the journal decides whether to publish the article or not. “90% of papers are rejected at this stage. You then have to start again with another journal, which won’t be at the level of Science or Nature, but a tier below, meaning you could lose another year in the revision and correction process,” Cristian explained. Fortunately, his article was accepted and published in the November issue of Science. “I’m really pleased; a publication like this opens many doors,” he said.
So what is his research about? It’s a study on retinitis pigmentosa, a hereditary eye condition that affects 1 in 3,000 people and causes gradual vision loss. Cristian and his team have researched the underlying causes of the condition, opening up new possibilities for therapies that could prevent the cell death that is the main cause of the disease. The key, they suggest, lies in the regulation of proteins through ubiquitin, which marks harmful proteins for elimination. This is the approach proposed in the article to combat retinitis pigmentosa.
According to this young scientist, Germany offers more opportunities for those in the field of science, as well as better prospects for building a life. At 34, Cristian and his partner María already have two children, Gonzalo and Gala, aged three and five.
“Gala, like Dalí’s muse. María studied art history,” Cristian explained. He also shared that María, who is from Madrid, moved to Germany with him. While he focused on his research, she prepared for exams to qualify for a position with the Andalusian government, which she passed. She is now taking time off to care for their children, but will return to work in a few months. At that point, the family plans to move back to Spain, to Andalucía, Malaga or Seville. To make this possible, Cristian is aiming for the Ramón y Cajal scholarship, which he will apply for early next year and his publication in Science will give him an advantage in the application process.
In Germany, thanks to better working conditions for young scientists, Cristian has grown professionally and personally and started a family. He feels this would have been harder in Spain due to the nature of contracts for scientific researchers.
However, he misses the warmth of Spanish people and the lifestyle. “My family is eager to return,” he said. He grew up in a close-knit community in Malaga, and it shows.
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