What we do
At the interface of biology and computer science, we seek to better understand evolutionary and functional relationships between genes, genomes and species. Key underlying questions are:
- How can we extrapolate current biological knowledge, concentrated in a few model organisms, to the rest of life?
- Conversely, how can we exploit the wealth and diversity of life to better grasp an organism of interest?
- How to devise methods that get more accurate with more data?
Our activities are divided between bioinformatics methods and resource development, and their application – typically with experimentalists.
The group develops the OMA resource (part of SwissOrthology), the Phylo.io tree viewer, and the ALF genome evolution simulator.
Find out more about the Group’s activities
Main publications 2021
- Rossier V et al.
OMAmer: tree-driven and alignment-free protein assignment to subfamilies outperforms closest sequence approaches
Bioinformatics, 10.1093/bioinformatics/btab219 - Zajac N et al.
Gene Duplication and Gain in the Trematode Atriophallophorus winterbourni Contributes to Adaptation to Parasitism
Genome Biol Evol, 10.1093/gbe/evab010 - Hodcroft EB et al.
Want to track pandemic variants faster? Fix the bioinformatics bottleneck
Nature, 10.1038/d41586-021-00525-x
