J. Ignasi Lucas Lledó
Postdoctoral Research Associate
joslucas(at)indiana.edu
(812) 856-0115
Ph.D. Universitat de València (Spain). Thesis title: 'Evolutionary
and functional context of Parkin and DJ1 genes, involved in Parkinson's
disease'.
B.S. Universitat d'Alacant (Spain).
I'm interested in mutation as a main but poorly characterized evolutionary factor. How do mutation rate and the frequency of different mutation types vary in different lineages? How does this variation correlate with structural features in genomes?
Taking advantage of my experience in molecular evolution and comparative genomics, I'm studying the evolution of the DNA repair machinery as a first approach to these questions.
On the long term, I want to gain insight on the impact of non-adaptive evolutionary mechanisms not only in the structure of the genome but also in the evolution of some phenotypic features, ranging from multicellularity to senescence.
Publications
Ossowski, S.*, Schneeberger, K.*, Lucas J.I.*#., Warthmann, N., Clark, R.M., Shaw, R.G., Weigel, D.#, Lynch, M. 2009. The rate and molecular spectrum of spontaneous mutations in Arabidopsis thaliana. Science (in press). (*, contributed equally; #, corresponding authors).
Denver, D.R., Dolan, P.C., Wilhelm, L.J., Sung, W., Lucas J.I., Howe, D.K., Lewis, S.C., Okamoto, K., Thomas, W.K., Lynch, M., Baer, C.F. 2009. A genome-wide view of Caenorhabditis elegansbase-substitution
mutation processes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 106(38):16310-4.
Lucas J.I., and Lynch, M. 2009. Evolution of mutation rates:phylogenomic
analysis of the photolyase/cryptochrome family. Mol. Biol.Evol. 26(5):1143-53.
Lucas JI, Marin I. 2007. A new evolutionary paradigm for the
Parkinson disease gene DJ-1. Mol Biol Evol 24(2):551-61.
Arnau V, Gallach M, Lucas JI, Marin I. 2006. UVPAR: fast detection of functional shifts in duplicate genes. BMC Bioinformatics 7:174.
Lucas JI, Arnau V, Marin I. 2006. Comparative genomics and protein domain graph analyses link ubiquitination and RNA metabolism. J Mol Biol 357(1):9-17.
Marin I, Lucas JI, Gradilla AC, Ferrus A. 2004. Parkin and relatives: the RBR family of ubiquitin ligases. Physiol Genomics 17(3):253-63.