Team | demendozalab

Alex de Mendoza

Lab head

I did my PhD at the University of Barcelona (Spain) working on comparative genomics of unicellular relatives of animals with Prof. Iñaki Ruiz-Trillo. Then I trained as a postdoc in the laboratory of Prof. Ryan Lister at The University of Western Australia, working on comparative epigenomics of various organisms, from dinoflagellates to humans. From January 2020 I became a Lecturer and I run my own group at Queen Mary University of London, focusing on the evolution of epigenomes, transposable elements and everything in between.

Full CV

Luke Sarre

PhD student

I graduated with a Masters from the University of Sheffield in 2017, before moving to California to continue my studies with Joanne Chory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where I studied macromolecule synthesis and regulation in plants. My interest in evolution then took me to Columbia University to work with Professor Peter Andolfatto and Professor Molly Przeworski before beginning my PhD at Queen Mary University of London. Here I am studying the evolution of DNA methylation in unicellular eukaryotes.

Pedro Romero

PhD student

For my undergraduate project, I studied damage control in yeast with Professor Andrés Clemente Blanco at the University of Salamanca (Spain). Later, I did my Masters at Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain), where I worked on stress response in unicellular relatives of animals with Professor Iñaki Ruíz-Trillo. Now, following my interests in genetics and evolution I find myself doing a PhD studying host gene capture by transposable elements and adenine methylation in unicellular eukaryotes.

Lan Xu

Postdoc

I did my PhD study with Drs. Ten-Tsao Wong and Yonathan Zohar at Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, University of Maryland Baltimore County, USA. My research there focused on developing technologies to disrupt primordial germ cell development to produce reproductively sterile animals (zebrafish, salmonid, oyster) for aquaculture and I also studied the change of pituitary in sterile rainbow trout by single-cell RNA sequencing. My current research aims to understand the role of DNA methylation in the model invertebrate species starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis.

Benjamin Tapon

LIDo-DTP PhD student

My integrated Masters program at UCL in generalist biology gave me an appreciation for evolution and genetics. This degree included a Bachelor's project on the evolution of malaria, under Prof. Francois Balloux. I then conducted my Master's on a citizen science project dedicated to sampling the wasp diversity of the UK, with Prof. Seirian Sumner. Now, as a LIDo DTP student, I am researching evolutionary epigenomics, focusing on epigenomic engineering approaches in stem cells to understand the evolution of DNA methylation patterns.

Giselle Gastellou Peralta

CONACyT MRes student

I did my undergraduate project at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where I studied the genotoxic effects of hydroquinone in rats with Dr. Regina Montero Montoya. For my Masters, I will be studying DNA methylation in Pseudocrossidium replicatum (a mexican moss that is tolerant to full desiccation) as part of a dual programme beetween QMUL and the Instituto Politécnico Nacional (Mexico), cosupervised by Dr. Alex de Mendoza and Dr. Miguel Angel Villalobos.

Peng Zhou

CSC PhD student

I completed my undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China/UK), where I developed a strong foundation in various aspects of biology. Following that, I pursued a Master's degree at the University of Liverpool, where I had the opportunity to study imprinted genes—genes with allelic expression bias regulated by epigenetic marks, supervised by Dr Antonius Plagge. Currently, I am continuing my interest in epigenetics as an MSc Bioinformatics student and CSC PhD at Queen Mary University of London, where my focus is on the evolution of DNA methylation readers.

Richard Heely

Postdoc

completed my PhD at the European Institute of Oncology (IEO) in Milan where I worked on DNA methylation alterations at promoters in cancer in the group of Dr. Martin Schaefer. There I developed algorithms to detect promoters where DNA methylation change appears to be under selection in cancer and also to identify the genomic regions where DNA methylation is most strongly associated with transcription. My research here is focused on the evolution and inheritance of DNA methylation patterns in eukaryotes.

Alumni

Postdocs

Vladimir Ovchinnikov - Bioinformatician, Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK.

BSc/MSc students

Jan Murillo - Imperial, summer internship 2024.

Alvaro Segura Campaña - QMUL BSc in Zoology last year project 2023-2024.

Batool Mahmoud - QMUL BSc in Medical Genetics last year project 2023-2024.

Tahmina Omarzade - QMUL BSc in Medical Genetics last year project 2022-2023.

Deetya Patel - QMUL BSc in Medical Genetics last year project 2021-2023.

Yasemin Bridges - QMUL MSc in Bioinformatics project 2021-2022.

Parnia Babaei - QMUL BSc in Medical Genetics last year project 2021-2022.

Matous Elphick - Undergraduate summer research student, 2020.

Collaborators

Many of our projects are done in close collaboration with other laboratories, both at QMUL and elsewhere. Here we list some of the ongoing collaborators:

Martin-Duran Lab, QMUL.

Bogdanovic Lab, CABD, Spain.

Lister Lab, UWA, Australia.

Ferdinand Marlétaz Lab, University College London.

Genomic EvoDevo Lab, Hiroshima Prefectural University, Japan.

MulticellGenome Lab, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, Spain.

Florian Maumus, INRA, France.

Omaya Dudin Lab, University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Sebé-Pedrós Lab, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Spain.

Ralf Jauch Lab, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.