RESEARCH

Bioinformatics and Data Integration

Recent advances in science and technology are leading to a revision and re-orientation of methodologies, addressing old and current issues from a new perspective. Advances in next-generation sequencing (NGS) are allowing comparative analysis of the abundance and diversity of whole microbial communities, generating a large amount of data and findings at a systems level. The current limitation for biologists has been the increasing demand for computational power and training required for processing NGS data. 

I am working on the development of new Bioinformatics tools and designing new scientific workflows to integrate multi-omics data (For example, integrating metagenomics and metatranscriptomics datasets).

One Health Relationships between Human, Animal, and Environmental Microbiomes

The One Health concept is a global strategy to study the relationship between human and animal health and the transfer of pathogenic and non-pathogenic species between these systems. In the clinical context, metagenomics is also a powerful weapon in the fight against antibiotic resistance pathogens in humans and animals. 

Currently, I have further to look at the role of antibiotic-resistance genes in microbial communities of several ecosystems, which included host-associated and soil microbiomes in a One Health context.

Genome-Resolved Metagenomics

Despite all efforts to access microbial diversity, most soil microbes are still unknown and we are far from understanding several microbe-mediated processes in soil. The development and application of novel computational strategies have successfully allowed us to reconstruct complete or near-complete genomes of rare and/or uncultured bacteria.

I am working on the application of computational methods to reconstruct microbial genomes metagenomics using several types of datasets (from low-diversity to high-complex environments).

Collaborative Research

None of what I am doing would be possible without the collaboration and help of all people who composed the multidisciplinary teams that I have work during my scientific career.