Department: Biología Molecular e Ingeniería Bioquímica

Research centre: Centro Andaluz de Biología del Desarrollo (CABD)

Area: Genetics

Research group: Organización genómica, homeostasis y evolución

Email: ajperez@upo.es

Personal web: http://www.bioinfocabd.upo.es/

Áreas PAIDI: Biología y Biotecnología

Programas de doctorado: Ingeniería, Ciencia de Datos y Bioinformática

Doctor by the Universidad de Málaga with the thesis Estrategia computacional para la asignación funcional de proteínas abordando el problema de multidominio 2003. Supervised by Dr. Guillermo Thode Mayoral, Dr. Oswaldo Trelles.

I have a degree in Biology and a PhD with a thesis on the development of a bioinformatics tool for protein function prediction. I did a 2 months stay at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) with a EMBO grant, and a postdoctoral contract at the National Institute of Bioinformatics (INB), where I worked in a group developing web tools for bioinformatics integration. For 7 years, I was of an online Master in Bioinformatics at the International University of Andalusia (UNIA) and since 2007 a full time professor at the Pablo de Olavide University (UPO), with a research line in data mining, annotation of biological sequences at the omic scale, and analysis of sequences linked to human diseases, in the latter with published work in rare genetic diseases and infectious diseases (several in Spinal Muscular Atrophy, Tay-Sachs, AIDS and nosocomial infections). Particularly interested in the development of bioinformatics tools and protocols for structural and functional annotation of genomes, as well as gene expression analysis, and their application to the study of specific biological problems, with special interest in human diseases. In this field I have published several articles, and directed dozens of master's theses, several of which are associated with the analysis of bacterial pangenomes and description and analysis of CRISPR-Cas defense systems. Some of the results of these works have been published in scientific journals, with the students who developed them. In the field of computational analysis of bacterial pangenomes I have published more than 10 articles since 2017, in first decile journals and with a high number of citations. I am currently applying my bioinformatics skills to study genomes of pathogenic bacteria, as well as to better understand the bacteria-bacteriophage (viruses that infect bacteria) interaction. In this field I have multiple collaborations with laboratory groups, both nationally and internationally. I am also director of the Scientific Computing Center of the UPO (C3UPO) that manages a cluster of almost 2,000 computational cores and in teaching, I have been director of a master's degree in Health Biotechnology for 10 years, and currently I direct a specialization course and an online master's degree in Bioinformatics Analysis, both at the UPO. I have directed 3 doctoral theses, one more to be finished in March 2023 and 2 more in process, 3 of them in bacterial genome analysis. Finally, I have been responsible for 6 research technician contracts of the Junta de Andalucia and the Ministry.