Juan Pascual-Anaya, Author at the Node

Juan Pascual-Anaya

I am an evolutionary developmental biologist fascinated by vertebrates –those animals with a dorsal backbone– and their morphological diversity and evolution. Limbs, wings, jaws and feathers are just a handful of examples of specific organs and traits exhibited by vertebrates. How did these evolve? What changes in their genomes can explain their origin? During my research career I have aimed to provide novel answers to these questions using genomics and transcriptomics and applying them to the field of Evo-devo (Evolutionary Development), a field that is in the crossroad between the classical developmental biology and evolutionary biology. Evo-devo tries to explain how changes in the developmental programs of living organisms lead to the appearance of morphological and physiological novelties. I am particularly interested in vertebrate novelties and innovations.

Posts by Juan Pascual-Anaya

A Day in the Life of a Turtle lab

Posted by Juan Pascual-Anaya, on 9 December 2014

We are Juan Pascual-Anaya and Tatsuya Hirasawa, two postdoctoral fellows at RIKEN (Kobe, Japan), in the laboratory of Shigeru Kuratani. We both have been working for the last 4-5 years ...

47th Meeting of the Japanese Society of Developmental Biologists, Nagoya

Posted by Juan Pascual-Anaya, on 19 June 2014

The heat started to increase in Japan, as the rainy season approached and with it the high levels of temperature and humidity. But this was not an obstacle for scientists from ...

Hi WYE. Thanks for your comment! I am analysing histone modifciation ChIP-seq data, and for that I used commercially available antibodies, cited elsewhere, and they have been successfully used in a wide range of organisms, from Drosophila to human stem cells. Histones are extremely conserved, and thus antibodies against them usually work pretty well in distantly related models.

by Pascual-Anaya in A Day in the Life of a Turtle lab on January 8, 2015

Thanks for the comment! Yes, there are actually three genomes available, including the one of P. sinensis. We published last year that one together with the green sea turtle's, Chelonia mydas (http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v45/n6/full/ng.2615.html), and at the same time the group of Bradley Shaffer published the western painted turtle genome, Chrysemys picta bellii (http://genomebiology.com/2013/14/3/R28). About tools, if you talk about genomics, we are on that. For instance, I am currently analysing some RNA-seq and ChIP-seq data related with the carapace formation.

by Pascual-Anaya in A Day in the Life of a Turtle lab on December 13, 2014

'“higher” (although I prefer not to refer to them that way) animals' I completely agree with you, but it's not a matter of preference, but of correctly naming groups of animals. 'Higher' or 'lower', "basal", "primitive animal" are simply not correct terms, no matter how often people that have the insolence of calling themselves evolutionary biologists use them. Anyway, that is a discussion that would probably need another post :) I enjoyed reading yous.

by Pascual-Anaya in A day in the life of a cnidarian lab on December 9, 2014