Multicellgenome
The goal of this lab is to understand the origin of animal multicellularity from a unicellular ancestor. To this end, the genomes of animals’ closest unicellular relatives are obtained in order to perform comparative and functional genomics. Moreover, the Multicellgenome lab is working on the development of genetic tools in two close unicellular relatives of animals with the purpose of establishing them as model organisms for addressing the origin of Metazoa. This will enable the elucidation of the ancestral function of the genes involved in multicellularity and offer insight into how they were co-opted.
Lab website: Multicellgenome Lab
Shadwick JDL, Ruiz-Trillo I. 2012. A genomic survey shows that the haloarchaeal type tyrosyl tRNA synthetase is not a synapomorphy of opisthokonts. European Journal of Protistology, 48(1):89-93. DOI:10.1016/j.ejop.2011.10.003
Sebe-Pedrs A, Zheng Y, Ruiz-Trillo I, Pan D. 2012. Premetazoan Origin of the Hippo Signaling Pathway. Cell Reports, 1(1):13-20. DOI:10.1016/j.celrep.2011.11.004
Schultheiss KP, Suga H, Ruiz-Trillo I, Miller WT. 2012. Lack of Csk-mediated negative regulation in a unicellular Src kinase. Biochemistry, 51(41):8267-8277. DOI:10.1021/bi300965h
Petit N, Piñeyro D, López-Panadès E, Casacuberta E, Navarro A. 2012. HeT-A_pi1, a piRNA target sequence in the Drosophila telomeric retrotransposon HeT-A, is extremely conserved across copies and species. PLoS ONE, 7(5):1-11. DOI:10.1371/journal.pone.0037405
Piñeyro D, López-Panadès E, Lucena-Pérez M, Casacuberta E. 2011. Transcriptional analysis of the HeT-A retrotransposon in mutant and wild type stocks reveals high sequence variability at Drosophila telomeres and other unusual features. BMC Genomics, 12. DOI:10.1186/1471-2164-12-573
de Mendoza A, Ruiz-Trillo I. 2011. New genomes, new taxa and deep questions in the eukaryotic tree of life: A meeting report on the EMBO comparative genomics conference. EvoDevo, 2(1):2-4. DOI:10.1186/2041-9139-2-22