Molecular development and cell biology
Within molecular immunology, the overall goal is to understand how stressors modulate the immune system, as well as the interplay between pathogen and host especially in mucosal surfaces.
In RNA biology, we study extremely diverged eukaryotes such as slime molds, sea anemones and corals to understand how self-catalytic introns (ribozymes) and other non-coding RNA (small ncRNAs and large ncRNAs) have emerged and evolved. The study of developmental biology at FBA targets the molecular mechanisms driving gamete formation and early embryonic development, with a focus on regulatory transcriptome and its modifications in zebrafish as the main model system.
Currently, our main goal is to find out how the initial parental information, contained in gametes, is executed through the earliest stages of development.