Hi there!

I am a Research Scientist at the Marine Biological Laboratory, The Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution.

MBL link

My research as molecular biologist lies at the junction of molecular evolution, genetics and epigenetics in the field of gene silencing/activation in metazoans. I seek to address the mechanisms that eukaryotic cells can deploy in order to repress foreign genetic invasions, like transposable elements (TEs) or foreign genes acquired by horizontal gene transfer (HTG). To this point my work has focused on he role of epigenetics. Epigenetics can be defined as the study of biological mechanisms that are able to regulate gene expression and function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence. These mechanisms include covalent modification of histones, DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs pathways.

Fernando Rodriguez, Ph.D.
Josephine Bay Paul Center for
Comparative Molecular Biology and Evolution
Marine Biological Laboratory
Woods Hole, MA 02543
Tel. (508) 289-7510
Fax: (508) 457-4727
frodriguez@mbl.edu