Evolutionary Genomics

We are interested in the analysis of patterns and processes occurred during the evolution of our genome, and in the application of the evolutionary thought in human health and disease. For doing that we apply concepts and methods of evolutionary genomics, phylogenetic analysis, and bioinformatics on the complete genome of different species of mammals. The main lines of research are:

Adaptive Human Evolution: The search for footprints of the action of natural selection (positive and negative) at molecular level occured during the evolution of the eukaryote genomes that currently are being part of specific genome projects. Here we are particularly interested in searching for the adaptive events, (recent or ancestral) that are relevant to human evolution and differentiation.

SNP's and Human Disease: Developing bioinformatics and evolutionary methods able to assess the effects of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the human genome. The main interest here is to know the phenotypic effects of such mutations on human disease genes.