About Manuel
Manuel Irimia obtained his PhD in 2010 at University of Barcelona. After postdocs at Stanford University and University of Toronto, he started his laboratory at Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in 2014. He is an ICREA Research Professor since 2018, and in October 2023 his lab moved to the MELIS department at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, with dual affiliation with the CRG. Since 2024, he is the coordinator of the CRG-UPF-IBE Joint Program on Evolutionary Medical Genomics. He is an EMBO Member (2025), and he obtained ERC Starting and Consolidators Grants in 2014 and 2020, among other competitive international grants.
Research
Our research is centered on two major questions: How does a single genome sequence encode the information to build the enormous complexity of cell types and structures of an adult organism? How are changes in this sequence translated into morphological novelties during evolution? We approach these topics focusing on cell and tissue type specific transcriptomes: How are they encoded in the genome? How are they generated during embryogenesis? How do they impact cell function in adult organisms? How do they evolve and how they impact evolution? What are their pathological implications? To answer these questions, we not only study transcriptional regulation, but also other mechanisms that expand transcriptomic diversity, such as alternative splicing and gene duplication. We do so using bioinformatic and omics approaches as well as wet-lab experiments in vivo and in vitro.