The discipline of Evolution and Development (EvoDevo) arose during the early 80s as an integrative approach at the intersection between Evolutionary Genetics and Developmental Biology aiming to understand the origin the outstanding biodiversity of the Earth by studying the changes of the mechanisms of development that drive the evolution of each group of organisms. Evo-Devo was recognized in the millennium issue of Nature (Impacts of foreseeable science”, Nature vol 402, n6761 suppl, 2 December 1999) among the ten disciplines that would have a major impact on the Society of the XXI Century, and certainly, this prediction has become a reality in which Evo-Devo has even merged three other of those ten disciplines – Modular cell biology, New generation computing, and Complex system modelling. Upon the bloom of genomics, and in the advent of the Earth Biogenome Project in which the genomes of ALL eukaryotic species of the planet Earth will be sequenced in the next decade, together with the development of feasible gene editing technologies that can be apply to any organism, EvoDevo is evolving inside fundamental questions, for example: new animal models to check which gene networks may be involved in the generation of new organs in the -omics era, understanding the effects of “unexpected molecular encounters” between invading horizontal genes (mostly through virus or transposons), the origin of new genes by shuffling modular elements, or challenging the viruses/host interactions.
Our consolidated SGR group of EvoDevoCat is the result of many years of EvoDevo tradition in the Section of Genetics of the University of Barcelona of what is known as the “EvoDevo School of Barcelona”, probably one of the main sources of EvoDevo researchers and projects of the Hispanic peninsula and the Mediterranean area. Our consolidated SGR group of EvoDevoCat continuously incorporate new team leaders, such as the recent incorporation of Isabel Almudi, Nacho Maeso o Jordi Serra-Cobo, that consolidate and span an interdisciplinary set of scientific teams that share in common a comparative genomic approach to investigate a variety of fundamental questions using a wide variety of animal models throughout the evolutionary tree of life. These fundamental questions addresses how genomes and gene networks evolve through the gain or loss of new genes, protein modules, transposons or viral elements, and how this evolution drives the acquisition of evolutionary innovations such as new organs, new ecological adaptations or neurobiological responses to challenging environments, or to the resistance or susceptibility to diseases. The fundamental questions of basic research addressed from a genomic point of view by the EvoDevoCat SGR group is therefore linked to many of the challenges that our Society is currently facing, including ecological and climate change challenges, and biomedical challenges related to human diseases such as brain alterations, autism and other neurobiological disorders, cardiomyopathies, and virus-host interaction that can give rise to new pandemics.
Past EvoDevo-SGR projects: 2005-SGR-00578, 2008-SGR-578, 2009-SGR-336, 2014-SGR-290, 2017-SGR-1665
Our consolidated SGR group of EvoDevoCat is the result of many years of EvoDevo tradition in the Section of Genetics of the University of Barcelona of what is known as the “EvoDevo School of Barcelona”, probably one of the main sources of EvoDevo researchers and projects of the Hispanic peninsula and the Mediterranean area. Our consolidated SGR group of EvoDevoCat continuously incorporate new team leaders, such as the recent incorporation of Isabel Almudi, Nacho Maeso o Jordi Serra-Cobo, that consolidate and span an interdisciplinary set of scientific teams that share in common a comparative genomic approach to investigate a variety of fundamental questions using a wide variety of animal models throughout the evolutionary tree of life. These fundamental questions addresses how genomes and gene networks evolve through the gain or loss of new genes, protein modules, transposons or viral elements, and how this evolution drives the acquisition of evolutionary innovations such as new organs, new ecological adaptations or neurobiological responses to challenging environments, or to the resistance or susceptibility to diseases. The fundamental questions of basic research addressed from a genomic point of view by the EvoDevoCat SGR group is therefore linked to many of the challenges that our Society is currently facing, including ecological and climate change challenges, and biomedical challenges related to human diseases such as brain alterations, autism and other neurobiological disorders, cardiomyopathies, and virus-host interaction that can give rise to new pandemics.
Past EvoDevo-SGR projects: 2005-SGR-00578, 2008-SGR-578, 2009-SGR-336, 2014-SGR-290, 2017-SGR-1665