Hologenomics in the Gilbert Group

Adaptive, Comparative and Speciation Genomics
What is the genomic basis of change, whether at the intra- or inter-specific level? What are the limits of our current understandings of how genomes work? How messy is speciation, and what is the relative role of genomics vs other factors as this speciation happens?

Conservation and Population Genomics
Using both reduced representation as well as full genome resequencing data, we are studying the population structure of a range of animals and plants across both the local and global scale.

Domestication Genomics
Using ancient DNA and associated biomolecules we are studying the timing and tempo of change of the genetic transitions that domestic species underwent as humans transformed them from their wild relatives.

Food Genomics
Many of the techniques we implement in our other research has perhaps surprising relevance for industry. This includes deciphering the microbial interactions during fermentation processes, through to elucidating the genomic basis of desirable phenotypes.

Hologenomics and Metagenomics
What role do our microbial passengers play in the adaptation of plants and animals to new environments? And what is the interplay between the host’s genome and that of the associated microbes?

Metabarcoding
Metabarcoding is the massively parallel amplicon sequencing of complex biological materials with an aim of reconstructing the taxonomic variation in such materials. We develop and apply such techniques to a wide range of questions, spanning the diagnostic to the auditing of biodiversity.

Palaeogenomics
Ancient DNA studies have finally entered the era in which the datasets recoverable from degraded materials can be studied at the genomic scale. Many technical challenges remain, whether relating to the most efficient recovery and analysis of such data, as well as outlining the realistic limits to the contributions of aDNA to our understanding of life. We work on attempting to overcome some of these challenges through the development and validation of new methods, as well as apply aDNA datasets to a range of the above questions.