Maria Elena Casacuberta Suñer

My scientific career has focused in understanding how changes in the genomes are translated into functional changes at molecular and cell biological level. Following this interest my lines of research are summarized in; the study of the genome organization with specific attention to the functional potential of the interaction between mobile elements and the host genome, and in the last years, in understanding which molecular and cellular mechanisms might have been key for the transition to multicellularity in animals. During my PhD, I studied the organization the genome of Arabidopsis thaliana while participating in its the sequencing project. During my Postdoc at MIT (Cambridge, USA), I deepened my studies on the relationship between mobile elements and host genomes by cloning, sequencing and comparing the telomeres of Drosophila species across the entire genera. My research was key to understand the evolution of telomeres by describing a remarkable exception of Telomerase, and the unveiling of the evolutionary connections between the Telomerase and the Reverse Transcriptases. Converting non-model species in experimentally treatable ones, has become a distinct feature of my career, allowing me and my group to approach fundamental questions with a different conceptual and methodological framework. After leading alone, I am now co-leading projects with Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo at the MultiCellGenome Lab. Iñaki and myself, combine complementary expertise to investigate the evolutionary path behind the transition to multicellularity at the onset of animals. Studying this question involves integrating genomic, phylogenomic, functional and cellular knowledge and therefore, gains from this combination.