Beltrao Group

Our group is interested in understanding how novel cellular functions arise and diverge during evolution. What are the molecular sources of phenotypic novelties, or in other words, how genetic variability that is introduced at the level of the DNA is propagated through protein structures and interaction networks to give rise to phenotypic variability. Within the broad scope of this evolutionary problem, our team is currently focused in two related areas:

1. the function and evolution of post-translational regulatory networks; and
2. the evolution of genetic and chemical-genetic interactions.

These studies are required not just to understand the evolutionary process but should also help us to understand the differences between different individuals (i.e. individual genomics) and improve our capacity to devise combinatorial therapeutic strategies.