Mehrdad Hajibabaei

Department
Email Address
[email protected]
Research Areas
Research Keywords
Research Description

The general theme of our research is the study of evolutionary processes at the genomic level and the use of sequence information to investigate biodiversity, ecosystems, and environmental change. The work in our group spans from molecular evolutionary biology to technology development and bioinformatics.

Research Summary

Our work spans three research themes:
1) DNA metasystematics: We gather biodiversity data through the analysis of marker genes from bulk samples (water, soil, and sediments). We pioneered this technique for benthic macroinvertebrates, used widely as bioindicators of aquatic ecosystems.
2) Biodiversity transcriptomics: We develop comparative transcritpome-based approaches for non-model organisms to gain insights on evolution of transcriptomes and understand molecular responses at ecological scale.
3) Bioinformatic approaches for biodiversity genomics data: We develop and test taxonomic assignment approaches for many taxonomic groups and marker genes, and develop tools to enhance analysis of metabarcoding and biodiversity genomic data through machine-learning methods and refined analysis.

Locations of international collaborators

University of Auckland, Cawthron Institute, Environmental Protection Authority, University of Otago (New Zealand); Macquarie University, Curtin University (Australia); Klaipeda University (Lithuania); King's College London, Lancaster University (UK); University of North Texas (USA).

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