Rate My Professor Marcel Vieira-Lara

Marcel Vieira-Lara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biotechnology in the Faculty of Applied Sciences at Delft University of Technology, where he leads the Marcel Vieira-Lara Group in the Industrial Microbiology section. With expertise in energy metabolism, his research delves into bioenergetics and quantitative biology applied to biotechnology, examining metabolic strategies, energy transduction processes, and their coupling to respiratory chains in industrially relevant organisms. Adopting a systems biology perspective, the group integrates genes, proteins, metabolites, and fluxes using experimental and computational methods under physiological and industrial conditions. This work addresses key challenges such as the protein transition to alternative sources, utilization of alternative feedstocks, and metabolic engineering to boost yields and efficiency. In the Zero Emission Biotechnology programme, Vieira-Lara studies mammalian cells for pharmaceutical production and cultivated meat, optimizing mitochondrial metabolism, oxygen and nutrient use in bioreactors, and scaling processes to reduce CO₂ emissions and environmental impact compared to traditional livestock farming. He has expressed curiosity about organismal metabolic differences and their biotechnological potential.

Vieira-Lara completed his PhD at the University Medical Center Groningen in the Laboratory of Pediatrics, supervised by Prof. Barbara Bakker. His project, 'A matter of fat: disentangling lipid-induced insulin resistance,' employed systems biology, computational modelling, mathematical theory, and quantitative experiments; he won a prestigious PhD scholarship in 2017 for top students in the Medical and Pharmaceutical Drug Innovation master's programme. He commenced his assistant professorship at TU Delft one year after his PhD defence. In teaching, he contributes to the BSc Life Science & Technology programme by Delft University of Technology and Leiden University, delivering Microbial Physiology (LB2763, 5 EC, co-taught with Rinke van Tatenhove-Pel), which covers microbial metabolism thermodynamically, and Metabolic Engineering (LB2771, 4 EC), focusing on bioprocess optimization. His publications, cited over 530 times on Google Scholar, include 'Intermittent fasting results in tissue-specific changes in bioenergetics and redox state' (PLoS One, 2015), 'CoA-dependent activation of mitochondrial acyl carrier protein links four neurodegenerative diseases' (EMBO Molecular Medicine, 2019), 'Full humanization of the glycolytic pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae' (Cell Reports, 2022), 'Constitutive adipocyte mTORC1 activation enhances mitochondrial activity and reduces visceral adiposity in mice' (Biochimica et Biophysica Acta-Molecular and Cell Biology of Lipids, 2016), and 'Age-related susceptibility to insulin resistance arises from a combination of CPT1B decline and lipid overload' (BMC Biology, 2021).