Project

Paleo(meta)genomics is an emerging and rapidly growing field where most is yet to be done. In most cases, it consists in the analysis of ancient DNA high-throughput sequencing data obtained from archaeological material or historical samples, and the goal is to retrieve and interpret the genomic information from species that from the past (microbial, eukaryotic, etc.) It combines tools borrowed from different fields, such as genomics, computational biology, microbial ecology, phylogenetics, population genetics, etc. However, at the moment there are no well-established tools for the analysis of this type of data. Hence, each lab must develop custom solutions, combining existing tools or developing new ones to meet the goals of their research programs. As a recently established lab, the microbial paleogenomics unit will spend the upcoming months setting up diverse pipelines and analysis tools for the different projects that will be developed in the coming years, many of which have been already used but need to be re-written in an understandable languaje and structure.