Most plants complete their life cycle in a single location and, therefore, their development and reproduction depend on the environmental conditions to which they are exposed. Environmental stresses, such as drought, high and low temperatures, pathogen infection, etc., seriously affect the development and growth of plants. To face these challenges, plants have developed molecular strategies that allow them to survive in such adverse conditions. It should be noted that, in nature, plants are often challenged by multiple stresses simultaneously.

We are interested in understanding how species proliferate and change over time. We use molecular tools and fieldwork approaches to investigate evolutionary and ecological patterns and processes at both the individual and population level. Much of this work is focused on island birds (using extinct and extant taxa) where I investigate the causes and consequences of adaptive (and non-adaptive) genetic variation to understand the mechanisms driving avian radiations.

The Marine Geology Resources and Extreme Environments Research Group at IGME has a broad experience in the field of the marine geology (tectonic, sedimentary and mineralization processes in continental margins and oceanic basins) and in the natural resources, especially in marine mineral deposits and mining wastes.

It is a multidisciplinary group whose main target is to study the status, vulnerability and resilience of water resources and associated ecosystems, and the analysis of sustainable management strategies. It includes works on monitoring, modeling and analyzing water resource systems at different scales, with special emphasis on groundwater. Historical periods and possible future scenarios are studied to evaluate adaptation strategies aimed at reducing the possible impacts of climate and/or global change.

The Mineral and Thermal Waters Service has an extensive knowledge, derived from many scientific-technical studies carried out during years of providing this service to society.

The BioFunLab, led by Manuel Delgado Baquerizo, aims to advance our understanding of biodiversity and ecosystem functioning in natural, agricultural and urban ecosystems from a changing world. The BioFunLab main research objectives include (1) investigating the structure and function of environmental microbiomes, (2) assessing the effects of global change drivers on biodiversity and function, (3) unrevealing global ecosystem patterns, and (4) creating global atlas of biodiversity and function.

This research group is devoted to the study of native and alien flora at various scales, with special emphasis on the Mediterranean basin, the Neotropics, and East Asia. With this objective, the group’s staff perform studies using different approaches and tools, which can be divided into three main axes: (1) diversity, (2) collections, (3) conservation and vegetation dynamics. Both geographic regions are large reservoirs of plant diversity at a global level but at the same time are among the areas of the planet with a greater degree of human disturbance and climate changes.

The Advanced Therapies group applies the latest gene editing, induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) and organoid technologies to design and validation of new therapies. Our line of work includes the development of new molecular tools to guarantee the safety of in vitro differentiated tissue transplants, the implementation of genomic repair systems for hereditary mutations, and the design of cellular therapies for any disease that could be tackled by modifying the genome of living cells. In particular, we are currently running projects on HIV, Alzheimer¿s disease and Cancer Immunotherapy.

Computational biology, bioinformatics and systems biology: (i) development of methods and (ii) applications in microorganisms and plants, considering several scales: from molecular (metabolic pathways, signaling and genetic regulation) to that of populations and ecosystems (microbiomes; microorganism-plant interactions).