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Raine Visiting Professor Lecture – 25 October 2016

Professor José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta

Andalusian Center for Developmental Biology, Spain

will present a Raine Lecture entitled:

Evolutionary dynamics of regulatory landscapes

on 25 October 2016 at 12 pm

at the McCusker Auditorium, Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research

All welcome

Professor José Luis Gómez-Skarmeta completed his PhD thesis at the Severo Ochoa Institute of Molecular Biology in Madrid, Spain in the laboratory of Professor Juan Modolell (PhD 1995). During this period, he identified and characterised the first pre-pattern genes araucan and caupolican of the Iroquois (Irx) complex in Drosophila, which are essential for, among other things, the activation of the achaete and scute genes. During his postdoctoral period at the University of Chile, he showed the evolutionary and functional conservation of these genes identifying and characterising them in the vertebrate Xenopus laevis.

Professor Gómez-Skarmeta runs a research laboratory at the Spanish Research Council and is a Principal Investigator at the Andalusian Centre of Developmental Biology. Professor Gómez-Skarmeta has a great interest in understanding how regulatory DNA is organised in the 3D chromatin space, the contribution of non-coding DNA to the regulation of gene expression during embryonic development and evolution, and how mutations in these non-coding regions cause human diseases. In recent years, combining epigenomics, chromosome capture assays, transgenic enhancer experiments and mutagenic studies, Professor Gómez-Skarmeta has made important discoveries regarding the dynamics of cis-regulatory elements during vertebrate development, the 3D organisation of chromatin through evolution, and the target genes of human regulatory mutations associated with diabetes, obesity, cancer, deafness and limb malformations.


University Host:
Professor Ryan Lister
Centre for Medical Research
The University of Western Australia
Telephone: 6488 4407
Email: ryan.lister@uwa.edu.au