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Cáceres Aguilar, Mario
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ICREA Research Professor at UAB (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona). Life & Medical Sciences
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Mario Cáceres obtained his Ph.D. at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) working on Drosophila chromosomal rearrangements (1995-2000). He then moved to the U.S.A as a postdoc at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies (2001-2003) and Emory University (2003-2006), where his research shifted to the use of novel genomic techniques to compare gene-expression levels in humans and non-human primates, as a way to study human unique characteristics. In 2006 he was awarded a Ramón y Cajal position at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona, and focused on the identification of genomic changes with potential functional consequences in the human lineage, such as those associated with the observed expression differences and structural variants, especially inversions. Since 2010 he is an ICREA Research Professor and leads the Comparative and Functional Genomics group at the Institut de Biotecnologia y de Biomedicina (IBB) of the UAB.
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Research Interest
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My research focuses on genome evolution and the genetic basis of differences between individuals and closely-related species, and it is framed on two up-to-date biological questions, genomic structural variation and gene-expression changes. In particular, to address these questions, we use a multidisciplinary approach that combines new genomic methods and bioinformatic analysis of the extraordinary wealth of data that is being accumulated in humans, generating results of interest to many different fields. One of our main lines of research is the evolutionary and functional analysis of polymorphic inversions in the human genome, which aims to investigate the biological significance of this type of changes at a large scale. In addition, we are also carrying out an analysis of genomic determinants of gene-expression changes in humans. Briefly, the goal of this project is to determine the molecular causes of gene-expression changes in the human brain and the role of natural selection.
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KeyWords
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Genetics, Genomics, Human, Evolution, Structural variants, Gene expression
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ERC Codes
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Genomics, comparative genomics, functional genomics, Human genetics, Molecular Evolution
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