Vicoso Group
Sex-Chromosome Biology and Evolution
Sex chromosomes, such as the X and Y of mammals, are involved in sex-determination in many animal and plant species. Their sex specificity leads them to evolve differently from other chromosomes, and acquire distinctive biological properties. The Vicoso group investigates how sex chromosomes evolve over time, and what biological forces are driving their patterns of differentiation.
The Vicoso group is interested in understanding several aspects of the biology of sex chromosomes, and the evolutionary processes that shape their peculiar features. By combining the use of next-generation sequencing technologies with studies in several model and non-model organisms, they can address a variety of standing questions, such as: Why do some Y chromosomes degenerate while others remain homomorphic, and how does this relate to the extent of sexual dimorphism of the species? What forces drive some species to acquire global dosage compensation of the X, while others only compensate specific genes? What are the frequency and molecular dynamics of sex-chromosome turnover?
Group Leader
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Team
Current Projects
Sex chromosome turnover and conservation | Dosage compensation in female-heterogametic species | Gene expression evolution in sexual and asexual species
Publications
Vicoso B. 2019. Molecular and evolutionary dynamics of animal sex-chromosome turnover. Nature Ecology & Evolution. 3(12), 1632–1641. View
Puixeu Sala G, Pickup M, Field D, Barrett SCH. 2019. Variation in sexual dimorphism in a wind-pollinated plant: The influence of geographical context and life-cycle dynamics. New Phytologist. 224(3), 1108–1120. View
Yourick MR, Sandkam BA, Gammerdinger WJ, Escobar-Camacho D, Nandamuri SP, Clark FE, Joyce B, Conte MA, Kocher TD, Carleton KL. 2019. Diurnal variation in opsin expression and common housekeeping genes necessitates comprehensive normalization methods for quantitative real-time PCR analyses. Molecular Ecology Resources. 19(6), 1447–1460. View
Kelemen RK, Rajakaruna H, Cockburn I, Ganusov V. 2019. Clustering of activated CD8 T cells around Malaria-infected hepatocytes is rapid and is driven by antigen-specific cells. Frontiers in Immunology. 10, 2153. View
Picard MAL, Vicoso B, Roquis D, Bulla I, Augusto RC, Arancibia N, Grunau C, Boissier J, Cosseau C. 2019. Dosage compensation throughout the Schistosoma mansoni lifecycle: Specific chromatin landscape of the Z chromosome. Genome biology and evolution. 11(7), 1909–1922. View
Career
since 2015 Assistant Professor, IST Austria
2009 – 2014 Postdoc, University of California, Berkeley, USA
2010 PhD, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK
Selected Distinctions
2017 Member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences
2016 ERC Starting Grant
2016 FWF Standalone Grant
2011 DeLill Nasser Travel Award from the Genetics Society of America
