I'm a biochemist and molecular biologist by training. I obtained a PhD in Medical Sciences in 2005 (Radbout University Nijmegen). I was an EMBO postodoctoral fellow at the CIPF (Valencia) before starting my own group at the Bioinformatics and Genomics Department at the CRG (Barcelona, 2008-2019). In 2019 I joined as a Senior group leader the IRB and the BSC (Barcelona). I am ICREA Research professor since 2013 and EMBO member since 2021. I have been awardee of the ERC starting and consolidator grants and received awards such as the Margaret Dayhoff mid-career award (2017), correspondent membership of the Spanish Royal National Academy of Pharmacy, and membership of the Spanish Young Academy. I have co-authored over 300 articles, and founded one spin-off company. I have always used an evolutionary perspective to address different biological questions. I am not only interested in understanding how complex biological systems work, but also how they have come to be as they are.
Research interests
My main research interest is to understand the complex relationships between genome sequences and phenotypes and how these two features evolve within and across species. I generally use large-scale phylogenetics and molecular evolution approaches that allow looking at the evolution of genomes from the perspective of all of their genes, and apply these analyses to a variety of biological questions related to the evolution and function of biological communities, organisms, organelles, pathways, and families of protein-coding and non-coding genes. I have a special interest in understanding processes related to human pathogenesis. Through collaborations with experimental groups, I apply comparative genomics to discover new mechanisms and genes involved in interesting processes, especially those of clinical relevance. Given our exposure to new types and scales of data, my group has had the need to develop novel bioinformatics tools to fill in existing gaps.
Selected publications
– del Olmo V, Redondo-Río A, García AB, Limtong S, Saus E & Gabaldón T 2025, ‘Insights into the origin, hybridisation and adaptation of Candida metapsilosis hybrid pathogens‘, Plos pathogens, 21 – 1 – e1012864.
– Nunez-Rodriguez JC, Schikora-Tamarit MA, Ksiezopolska E & Gabaldón T 2025, ‘Simple large-scale quantitative phenotyping and antimicrobial susceptibility testing with Q-PHAST‘, Nature protocols.
– Mutti G, Ocaña-Pallarès E & Gabaldón T 2025, ‘Newly Developed Structure-Based Methods Do Not Outperform Standard Sequence-Based Methods for Large-Scale Phylogenomics‘, Molecular biology and evolution, 42 – 7 – msaf149.
– Hitzler, SUJ et al. 2025, ‘Host albumin redirects Candida albicans metabolism to engage an alternative pathogenicity pathway‘, Nature communications, 16 – 1 – 6447.
– Carolus H, Díaz-García J, Biriukov V, Jacobs S, Sofras D, Pageau A, Romero CL, Vinken L, Escribano P, Guinea J, Lagrou K, Landry CR, Gabaldón T & Van Dijck P 2025, ‘Epistasis at the cell surface: what is the role of Erg3 loss-of-function in acquired echinocandin resistance?‘, Mbio, vol.16, no.10.
– Szánthó LL, Merenyi Z, Donoghue P, Gabaldón T, Nagy LG, Szöllosi GJ & Ocaña-Pallarès E 2025, ‘A timetree of Fungi dated with fossils and horizontal gene transfers‘, Nature ecology & evolution. 9, 1989–2001.
– Bernabeu M, Manzano-Morales S & Gabaldón T 2025, ‘Phylogeny-aware Simulations Suggest a Low Impact of Unsampled Lineages in the Inference of Gene Flow During Eukaryogenesis‘, Genome biology and evolution, 17 – 11 – evaf190.
– Santos-Pujol, E et al. 2025, ‘The multiomics blueprint of the individual with the most extreme lifespan‘, Cell rep.medicine, 6 – 10 – 102368.