About

The Evolutionary Genomics Group (EGG), led by Dr. Nikolaos Vakirlis, is affiliated with the Hellenic Pasteur Institute, part of the international Pasteur Network. It is located at the historical Pasteur campus near Athens city center.

Our group’s research focuses on evolutionarily novel genes, aiming to understand how and why they originate, with a special interest on the process of de novo gene birth. Little is known about novel genes, also known as “orphans” yet they are found in the genome of nearly every species known to science. This makes their study one of the most exciting research areas in evolution and genomics. We also aim to understand the rules that govern the evolution of antimicrobial peptides, a natural weapon of organisms against pathogens with strong therapeutic potential. As a computational group we explore and implement existing cutting-edge computational molecular evolution, comparative ‘omics, phylogenetics and machine learning methods, but also innovate to produce new ones.