Projects
These are the scientific projects I'm currently working on:
Detection and emergence of novel genes
The birth of new genes can facilitate major evolutionary innovations. The accurate detection of novel genes is necessary to make inferences about the nature of their emergence and the role they play in shaping lineage-specific traits.
Brown algae are eukaryotes that evolved complex multicellularity and sex chromosomes independently from plants and animals. They represent a unique model to study the universality or uniqueness of processes that shape biological complexity.
The evolutionary history of pumpkins (Cucurbita) is peculiar, as they have experienced a whole-genome duplication event and at least six independent domestication events in five different species.