December 11th 2018: Invited seminar of Agostinho Antunes at EDB, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse.

Genomics of Adaptation

Whole genome sequencing projects can have a major relevance in understanding health, genetic disease, species adaptive evolution and molecular diversification. Currently, multiple species are having their genomes completely sequenced, from simple organisms, such as bacteria (e.g. microbiomes), to more complex taxa, such as higher vertebrates. This voluminous sequencing data generated across multiple organisms provides also the framework to better understand the genetic uniqueness of such species and related ones, allowing to explore the genetic changes underlining the evolution of diverse phenotypic and adaptive traits. Here, recent results from our group retrieved from comparative evolutionary genomic analyses of varied animal species will be considered to exemplify the adaptive success of species into diverse environments and lifestyles. The findings pinpoint unique molecular products of critical relevance in species evolution, diversification and conservation, but also highlight genomic novelties of importance for environmental and biomedical research.