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Jose V Lopez
Summary
Dr. Jose (Joe) Lopez is a Professor at the Nova Southeastern University Halmos College of Arts and Sciences. He earned a Master’s degree at Florida State University, and his doctorate at George Mason University studying the evolution of mitochondrial DNA and its transpositions (Numt) in feline nuclear genomes. Dr Lopez then applied his molecular evolutionary training characterizing the Orbicella (formerly Montastraea) annularis coral sibling species complex at STRI in Panama, and sponge genetics at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute. Since 2007, Dr Lopez’s current research at the NSU Center of Excellence in Coral Reef Ecosystems Research, involves diverse projects on marine invertebrate-microbial symbiosis, genomics and metagenomics of marine habitats, gene expression of marine organisms, marine microbiology, and systematics/phylogenetics for placing marine sponges on a global Tree of Life (www.PorToL.org). He was co-founder of the “Global Invertebrate Genomics Alliance” (http://gigacos.org), which applies genome sequencing of non-model invertebrate species, and Dr. Lopez is also involved with the consortium of sponge biologists characterizing symbionts as part of the global Earth Microbiome Project (http://earthmicrobiome.org). Dr. Lopez was also a team member of DEEPEND (Deep Pelagic Nekton Dynamics of the Gulf of Mexico –http://www.deependconsortium.org), which focused on oil effects in deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Recent research focuses on high throughput analyses of the genomes, metatranscriptomes and metagenomes of cyanobacterial communities and diverse marine invertebrate (sponges, corals, mollusk) symbioses through consortia with the Earth BioGenome (https://www.earthbiogenome.org/) and Aquatic Symbiosis Genome Projects (https://www.sanger.ac.uk/collaboration/aquatic-symbiosis-genomics-project/).
Biodiversity Evolutionary Studies Genomics Microbiology Molecular Biology