Life & Medical Sciences
Manuel Irimia obtained his PhD in 2010 at University of Barcelona investigating the origin of vertebrates at a genomic level. After two postdocs at Stanford University and University of Toronto, he joined the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in June 2014. He has recently been elected EMBO Young Investigator (2018) and obtained an ERC Starting Grant in 2014.
Manuel Irimia’s research is centered on two major questions: How does a single genome sequence encode the information to build the enormous complexity of cell types and structures of an adult organism? How are changes in this sequence translated into morphological novelties during evolution? To address these questions, his lab combines computational and experimental approaches using in vitro and in vivo systems (zebrafish, mouse and fruitfly) to investigate the roles of transcriptomic diversification and specialization in embryonic development and evolution.
Selected publications in 2018 before ICREA’s appointment:
– Marletaz, F., Firbas, P., Maeso, I., Tena, J.J., Bogdanovic, O., Perry, M., Wyatt, C.D.R., [+50 authors], Holland, P.W.H., Escriva, H.†, Gomez-Skarmeta, J.L.†, Irimia, M.† (2018). Amphioxus functional genomics and the origins of vertebrate gene regulation. Nature, 564:64-70.
– Grau-Bove, X., Ruiz-Trillo, I.†, Irimia, M.† (2018). Origin of exon skipping-rich transcriptomes in animals driven by evolution of gene architecture. Genome Biol, 19(1):135.
– Fernandez, J.P., Moreno-Mateos, M.A., Gohr, A., Miao, L., Chan, S.H., Irimia, M.†, Giraldez, A.J.† (2018). RES complex is associated with intron definition and required for zebrafish early embryogenesis. PLoS Genet, 14(7):e1007473.
† Corresponding authors