Vítor Sousa

Group Leader

Bioinformatics Adaptation Population Genomics Gene Flow Hybridization Demographic History

I conducted my Ph.D. at the Gulbenkian Science Institute (IGC, Oeiras, Portugal) and received my degree from the University of Lisbon in 2010. I was then a postdoctoral researcher in Jody Hey’s lab (Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA) from 2010 to 2013, and in Laurent Excoffier’s lab (University of Bern and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Switzerland) from 2013 to 2016. I am currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Lisbon, and leading the Evolutionary Genomics and Bioinformatics group of CE3C. At my group, we take a unique approach combining population genetics theory, development of bioinformatic inference methods, with analysis and generation of genomic data from natural and experimental populations. We aim to dissect the impact of hybridization and gene flow on adaptation and response of populations to climate change. Importantly, these processes underlie emergent societal challenges, reflected in UN and EU priorities in agriculture and global change (e.g., adaptation to drought, and evolution of resistance).

I address biological questions arising in the fields of speciation, conservation, molecular ecology and human genetics from a population genomics perspective. My research aims at characterizing the interplay between demographic processes (e.g. gene flow, bottlenecks, population expansions) and natural selection in the structure and divergence of populations. In particular, I am interested in answering fundamental questions such as: (i) How do demographic processes affect the ability of populations to adapt? (ii) How does the interplay between demographic processes, natural selection and recombination shape the observed genomic patterns? With the growing availability of population genomics data we have now the unprecedented opportunity to answer these questions. However, the answers depend upon theoretical models and computational methods to extract information from such genomic data. Part of my research is thus focused on theoretical modelling and development of bioinformatics methods to reconstruct demographic events (e.g., migration, population contractions) and to detect the genomic signatures of natural selection.