The gut microbiota is currently considered as an additional "organ" among living beings. The microbes that live inside us have co-evolved with us, generating an impact on our health. How did these organisms change to colonize the human being? How have they changed once they have become part of our bodies? What kind of changes has caused some of these native organisms to become relevant to our health?
Starting in the 2019, this lab is searching and studying evolutionary patterns in microbial genomes, with focus on organisms from the gut microbiome. Our strategy is to analyze the properties of genes and genomes from these organisms and compare them with their close relatives that inhabit other environments or, in the case of the study of the human microbiome, with organisms that inhabit other mammals. Our hypothesis is that those microbes inhabiting the human body had to acquire new functions by means of horizontal gene transfer (HGT), whereas they lost many of their original genes associated with lifestyles in other niches.
In order to test our hypothesis, we are analyzing genomes from isolates and MAGs, searching for candidate genes for HGT, as well as searching for gene gain/loss patterns when those genomes are compared with their closest non-microbiome relatives.
This lab work is supported by ANID Initiation grant #11200209 (Chile).
Juan Pablo Cárdenas (ORCID: 0000-0001-6715-7270) has a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Santiago de Chile (USACH) and a Ph.D. in Biotechnology from the Andrés Bello University (UNAB, Chile). With previous experience in biotechnology start-ups working on the human microbiome, JPCA started at Nov. 2019 his position as assistant professor at the Center for Genomics and Bioinformatics (CGB).
- Dámariz Gonzalez (Bioinformatician, Universidad de Talca). Research assistant
- Mauricio Morales (Biotecnology, Universidad Mayor). Undergraduate thesis student
- Boris Vidal (Biochemistry, Universidad Austral de Chile). Graduate student
- José Luis Maturana (Bioinformatician, Universidad de Chile). Former research assistant