Alejandro Reyes, PhD

Research Interests

During my undergraduate education as a microbiologist I came to appreciate the fascinating world of microbial communities upon learning how in any given environment of the world there are constant interactions between millions of organisms from different species with important consequences for the ecosystems they inhabit, including our own human body. For decades, Ecology and Microbiology seemed to be unrelated fields and thus the discipline of Microbial Ecology took a long time to emerge and consolidated; largely due to a lack of proper tools and technologies to explore it. However, with the development of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies, efficient algorithms for analyzing such data, and methodologies that allow the simultaneous study of all the (micro)organisms present in an environment at a given moment, in the last decade it has been possible to delve deeper into microbial interactions in which is currently known as meta-omic sciences. In my current position as Associate Professor I apply and develop genomic and computational tools and approaches for the study of different biotic communities to gain an understanding of their impact in biogeochemical cycles, agriculture, and human and animal health.