Evolution and Development (Evo-Devo)

Department of Genetics, Microbiology and Statistics

Faculty of Biology, UB

Jordi Garcia-Fernàndez
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-5677-5970
Tel +34 934034437
https://www.ub.edu/portal/web/dp-genmicrostat/evo-devo

Principal investigator: • Jordi Garcia-Fernàndez
PostDoc: • Enrique Navas-Pérez
PhD Student: • Carlos Herrera Úbeda

Current
Research

Biology in general and Developmental Evolution in particular are living a revolution after the accumulating amount of available genome data. This permits comparative analyses in a growing range of species, not only at the gene coding level as before, but also of cis-regulatory elements for gene regulation, transcriptomics to identify splicing events, and genome architecture to identify synteny and gene clustering. It is therefore possible to study any given aspect not from a single gene point of view, but with a system level approach, which includes the analyses of gene networks and interconnected processes in a range of species. Then, top-down (systems biology) and bottom-up approaches (molecular biology) are integrating, where both approaches meet, the cellular level.

Our group addresses this middle ground by analysing several kinds of genome changes that may have been implicated in the genesis and increase in complexity, particulary but not exclusively, of one of the most complex cellular structures in life, the vertebrate (and mammalian) nervous system. We take advantage of the bulk genome data available for key phylogenetic species, as well as the availability of embryos and manipulation techniques in a range of models, e.g., amphioxus, zebrafish, mouse to study, among others i) changes in transcriptional regulation of gene networks, ii) changes in alternative splicing-regulated networks, and iii) gene clustering by tandem gene duplication, iv) lncRNAs, v) RNA editing. From our data, several research lines purely biomedical arose in the past hence will do in the future.

Selected
Publications

Marletaz F, Firbas PN, Maeso I, Tena J, Bogdanovic O, Perry M, Wyatt CDR, de la Calle-Mustienes E, Bertrand S, Burguera D , Acemel RD, van Heeringen SJ, Naranjo S, Herrera-Ubeda C, Skvortsova K, Jimenez-Gancedo S, Aldea D, Marquez Y, Buono L,Kozmikova I, Permanyer J, Louis A, Albuixech-Crespo B, Le Petillon Y, Florian AL, Subirana L, Duckett PE, Farahani E, Aury JM, Mangenot S, Wincker P, Albalat R, Benito-Gutiérrez E, Cañestro C, Castro F, D’Aniello S, Ferrier DEK, Huang S, Laudet V, Marais GAB, Pontarotti P, Schubert M, Seitz H, Somorjai I, Takahashi T, Mirabeau O, Xu A, Yu JK, Carninci P, Martinez-Morales JR, Crollius HR, Kozmik Z, Weirauch M, Garcia-Fernàndez J, Lister R , Lenhard B, Holland PWH, Escriva H, Gómez-Skarmeta JL, Irimia M. Amphioxus functional genomics and the origins of vertebrate gene regulation. Nature. 564(7734), 64-70, 2018. doi.org/10.1038/s41586-018-0734-6

Ji, J.; Ramos-Vicente, D.; Navas, E.; Herrera-Úbeda, C.; Lizcano, JL; Garcia-Fernàndez, J.; Escriva, H.; Bayés, A.; Roher, N. Characterization of the TLR family in Branchiostoma lanceolatum and discovery of a novel TLR22-like involved in dsRNA recognition in amphioxus. Frontiers in Immunology. 9: 02525, 2018. doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2018.02525

Burguera D.; Marquez Y.; Racioppi C.; Permanyer J.; Torres-Méndez A.; Esposito R.; Albuixech-Crespo B.; Fanlo L.; D’Agostino Y.; Gohr A.; Navas-Perez E.; Riesgo A.; Cuomo C.; Benvenuto G.; Christiaen LA.; Martí E.; D’Aniello S.; Spagnuolo A.; Ristoratore F.; Arnone MI.; Garcia-Fernàndez J.; Irimia M. Evolutionary recruitment of flexible Esrp-dependent splicing programs into diverse embryonic morphogenetic processes. Nature Communications. 8:, 1799, 2017. doi.org/10.1038/s41467-017-01961-y

Albuixech-Crespo B.; López-Blanch L.; Burguera D.; Maeso I.; Sánchez-Arrones L.; Moreno-Bravo JA.; Somorjai I.; Pascual-Anaya J.; Puelles E.; Bovolenta P.; Garcia-Fernàndez J.; Puelles L.; Irimia M.; Ferran JL. Molecular regionalization of the developing amphioxus neural tube challenges major partitions of the vertebrate brain. PLoS Biology. 15:4, e2001573, 2017. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.2001573

Albuixech-Crespo, B.; Herrera-Úbeda, C.; Marfany, G.; Irimia, M.; Garcia-Fernàndez, J. Origin and evolution of the chordate central nervous system: insights from amphioxus genoarchitecture. The International Journal of Developmental Biology. 61, 655-664, 2017. doi.org/10.1387/ijdb.170258jg

Selected
Publications

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