MEMBERS OF THE GROUP (Active in 2018)
Postdoctoral Researchers Borja Esteve, Raquel Garcia, David Alejandro Juan, Martin Kuhlwilm, Esther Lizano, Carlos Morcillo, Joseph Orkin, Gerard Muntané (visiting)
Predoctoral Researchers Laura Batlle, Antoni de Dios, Paula Esteller, Luis José Ferrandez, Clàudia Fontseré, Lukas Kuderna, Irene Lobón, Aitor Serres, Manuel Solís, Marina Brasó, Txema Heredia, Marco Telford, Xavier Farré, Jonas Niemann (visiting)
Research Technicians Marina Álvarez, Marc de Manuel, Francesc Xavier Marcos, Sojung Han
Visiting Master Student Irune Ruiz
Visiting Undergraduate Student Ferriol Calvet
Erasmus visiting Student Alejandro Valenzuela
HIGHLIGHTS OF 2018
During 2018 our team got engaged into several exciting projects, including the generation of genome assemblies for 10,000 vertebrates or the performance of the largest phylogeny-based genome-phenome study ever carried out, in which we will focus on ageing and use approaches spearheaded by us (Muntané et al. 2018). Also, we became part of the Earth Biogenome Project. In order to achieve all these goals our group is investigating novel assembly methods and investigating novel methods to generate genome datasets from non-invasive samples (Hernandez et al. 2018).
2018 SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Ying Zhu, André MM Sousa, Tianliuyun Gao, Mario Skarica, Mingfeng Li, Gabriel Santpere, Paula Esteller-Cucala, David Juan, Luis Ferrández-Peral, Forrest O Gulden, Mo Yang, Daniel J Miller, Tomas Marques-Bonet, Yuka Imamura Kawasawa, Hongyu Zhao, Nenad Sestan “Spatiotemporal transcriptomic divergence across human and macaque brain development” Science 2018, 362:6420.
J Hernandez-Rodriguez, M Arandjelovic, J Lester, C de Filippo, A Weihmann, M Meyer, S Angedakin, F Casals, A Navarro, L Vigilant, HS Kühl, K Langergraber, C Boesch, D Hughes and T Marques-Bonet “The impact of endogenous content, replicates and pooling on genome capture from fecal samples” Molecular Ecology Resources, 2018 10:46AM EST | DOI: 10.1111/1755-0998.12728
G. Muntané, X. Farré, J. A. Rodríguez, C. Pegueroles. D. A. Hughes, J. P. de Magalhães T. Gabaldón and A. Navarro* (2018). Biological Processes Modulating Longevity across Primates: A Phylogenetic Genome-Phenome Analysis. Molecular Biology and Evolution 35(8): 1990-2004 (doi: 10.1093/molbev/msy105)
2018 FUNDED PROJECTS
HHMI International Award to Tomàs Marquès-Bonet
MICINN Plan Estatal 2017- BFU2017-86471-P. Population genetics from non-invasive samples.
MICINN Plan Estatal 2015- BFU2015-68649-P. Why and how we age? Molecular Evolution in Senescence in humans and other primates.
NIHMH U01. PAR-14-174. Somatic Mutations in Human Brain.
FIGURE CAPTION
Across evolution, organisms keep changing drastically in many important aspects. Here we illustrate variation in Maximum Lifespan and Medium Adult Weight of several mammal lineages. All this variation dwarfs what we can achieve in the lab through genetic manipulation.
The evolution of such huge phenotypic variation needs to be understood. High-quality genome assemblies will allow linking it to genome variation and will shed light upon some age-old mysteries such as the evolution of senescence.