The laboratory of Molecular Biodiversity is part of the Department of Ecosystems and Environment at the Faculty of Agronomy and Forest Engineering of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. Researchers, students of both undergraduate and postgraduate levels develop different lines of work with the aim of contributing to the conservation of biodiversity. Our goal is to understand the phylogeographic patterns and answer ecological/evolutionary questions using molecular tools, focused mainly on aquatic and terrestrial vertebrates.
Currently, we are implementing new technologies in the field of genomics (NGS: Next Generation Sequencing) and bioinformatics in order to understand phylogeographic patterns and identify the genes involved with different mechanisms of adaptation to climate change at intra- and interspecific level.
The cooperation of researchers, both Chilean and foreign, allow us to develop studies on a large spatial scale and solve more complex questions. We are also developing new lines of research aimed at species of interest in agricultural production and metagenomics.