Dr. André Marques

My current and future research goals involve manipulating chromosome behaviour and meiotic processes to create novel strategies in synthetic chromosome biology and inducing genetic diversity with potential applications for sustainable agriculture and food security. We also investigate chromosome structure and function in plants using molecular biology and genomics techniques, with a focus on unravelling the role of chromosomal organization in epigenome, cell division, and evolution. Currently we are starting a program to apply CRISPR/Cas9 approaches to design chromosomes for optimizing meiotic recombination control and understanding centromere function.

1. Hofstatter, P.G., Thangavel, G., Lux, T., Neumann, P., Vondrak, T., Novak, P., Zhang, M., Costa, L., Castellani, M., Scott, A., et al. Marques, A. (2022). Repeat-based holocentromeres influence genome architecture and karyotype evolution.Cell. 10.1016/j.cell.2022.06.045.
2. Hufnagel, B., Marques, A., Soriano, A., Marquès, L., Divol, F., Doumas, P., Sallet, E., Mancinotti, D., Carrere, S., Marande, W., et al. (2020). High-quality genome sequence of white lupin provides insight into soil exploration and seed quality. Nat. Commun.11, 492. 10.1038/s41467-019-14197-9.
3. Marques, A., Schubert, V., Houben, A., and Pedrosa-Harand, A. (2016). Restructuring of Holocentric Centromeres During Meiosis in the Plant Rhynchospora pubera.Genetics 204, 555–568. 10.1534/genetics.116.191213.
4. Marques, A., Ribeiro, T., Neumann, P., Macas, J., Novák, P., Schubert, V., Pellino, M., Fuchs, J., Ma, W., Kuhlmann, M., et al. (2015). Holocentromeres in Rhynchospora are associated with genome-wide centromere-specific repeat arrays interspersed among euchromatin. PNAS 112, 13633–13638. 10.1073/pnas.1512255112.
5. Cabral, G.*, Marques, A.*, Schubert, V., Pedrosa-Harand, A., and Schlögelhofer, P. (2014). Chiasmatic and achiasmatic inverted meiosis of plants with holocentric chromosomes.Nat. Commun. 5, 5070. 10.1038/ncomms6070.