The Van de Peer lab is running a joint lab at the Nanjing Agricultural University Link here

The Van de Peer lab is running a joint lab in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at the University of Pretoria.

ORCAE

ORCAE is an online genome annotation resource offering users the necessary tools and information to validate and correct gene annotations. The system is build on the wiki philosophy, all modifications to a certain gene are stored and can be found back in the annotation history of that gene. To be able to modify genes however you will need to have a user account. Anonymous users can browse the public genomes but don't have editing rights.

For the past 45 years, research in molecular biology has been based predominantly on reductionist thinking, trying to unravel the complex workings of living organisms by investigating genes or proteins one at a time. In recent years, molecular biologists have come to view the cell from a different, more global perspective. With the advent of fully sequenced genomes and high-throughput functional genomics technologies, it has become possible to monitor molecular properties such as gene expression levels or protein-DNA interactions across thousands of genes simultaneously.

Thousands of species are polyploid. However, the long-term establishment of organisms that have undergone ancient whole genome duplications (WGDs) has been exceedingly rare and when we analyse the genomes of plants and animals, we can, at most, find evidence for a very limited number of WGDs that survived on the longer term. The paucity of (established) ancient genome duplications and the existence of so many species that are currently polyploid provides a fascinating paradox.

THE APOSTASIA GENOME AND THE EVOLUTION OF ORCHIDS

Constituting approximately 10% of flowering plant species, orchids (Orchidaceae) display unique flower morphologies, possess an extraordinary diversity in lifestyle, and have successfully colonized almost every habitat on Earth.

Because of our unique and long-standing expertise in gene prediction and genome annotation, as well as our expertise in documenting ancient whole genome duplication events, our lab has been (and still is) involved in many international genome projects.

Early 2021, seven Ghent University research groups received funding so that they can develop projects throughout the next 7 years. Our research group was one of them. The Methusalem program offers the most prestigious and extensive funding from the Ghent University Special Research Fund. A total of 27.5 million euros have been allocated for a period of 7 years.

At present, knowledge about the (eco-)evolutionary effects of polyploidy is largely based on either the comparison of polyploids with the contemporary descendants of their diploid ancestors and their synthetic tetraploids or on signatures of Whole Genome Duplications (WGDs) in present-day plant genomes. These comparative methods, although informative, suffer from potential biases introduced by evolution of both the polyploid and its ancestors after establishment.