James Gahan.
Group leader.
James received his PhD in Biochemistry from University of Galway in Ireland in 2016. Following this, he spent 5 years as a Postdoc in the Michael Sars Centre at the University of Bergen in Norway where he worked on chromatin regulation in the nervous system of the cnidarian Nematostella vectensis. He then received a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral fellowship from the Welcome Trust to work on chromatin-based gene regulation in Choanoflagellates and was based at the University of Oxford, UK. In addition, he spent 1 year as a visiting scholar in UCSF. In 2023, James was awarded a prestigious ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council and, since April 2024, is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Chromosome Biology in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences at the University of Galway. Read more about James here:
Pathway to Independence – an interview with James Gahan | Development | The Company of Biologists

Maria Eleonora Rossi

Postdoctoral Researcher

Eleonora’s research focuses on using an integrative approach combining phylogenomics, comparative transcriptomics, and genomics, to reconstruct the evolutionary history of early animals. She obtained her PhD at the University of Bristol (UK) at the Paleobiology Research Group where she used sponges (Porifera) as a model system, to investigate the genetic mechanisms underlying biomineralization, and light receptors, to give us an insight into early animal evolution. After the PhD she joined briefly the University of Edinburgh where she worked on providing a timescale for the origin of placental mammals using both molecular and morphological data.
Here at the Gahan Lab, her research has moved to choanoflagellates, the sister group of animals, where she will try to understand the evolution of gene regulation.

Niño Posadas

PhD student

Niño, who hails from the Philippines, is fascinated by how different modes of gene regulation and host-microbe interactions have influenced early animal evolution and ecological success. For his PhD project, he seeks to describe the role of chromatin bivalency in driving temporal cell differentiation in choanoflagellates.

Matthias Achrainer

PhD Student

Matthias, originally from Austria, is interested in the evolution of multicellularity and complexity and is fascinated by gene regulation and chromatin organisation. He studied molecular cell and developmental biology in Innsbruck, where he worked on Hydra. His PhD project will focus on understanding the role of lamin genes in choanoflagellates.

Patricia Suárez Ara

Postdoc

Patricia is interested in the origin of animals from the point of view of their close unicellular relatives. She got her PhD in the Multicellgenome lab at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Barcelona, Spain. There, she focused on researching the phenotypic plasticity of the unicellular relatives of animals. In the Gahan lab, she will get closer to the root of animals and shift to exploring gene regulation, studying Polycomb mediated repression in the choanoflagellate S. rosetta!

Selia Namouchi

M2 Masters student

As master’s student in biology (genetics and developmental biology) at the Université Côte d’Azur in Nice, Selia has been passionate about genetics since the beginning of her studies. After working on the sex differences in drosophila melanogaster, she is now interested in studying the evolution of epigenetic modifications in choanoflagellates, the closest known relatives of animals. Her research will focus on the histone variant CENPA that, while present as a single copy in most model animals, has two paralogs in choanoflagellates.