Fitxa persona

Fernando Gonzalez Candelas, PhD (University of Valencia, 1987) is Professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia since 2006 and head of the “Evolution and Health” Research Unit at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology UV-CSIC (I2SysBio) at the same university. In addition, he has a joint appointment at the FISABIO-Public Health through the joint research unit “Infection and Public Health” with the University of Valencia and at the CIBERESP (Centre for Networked Research on Biomedicine – Public Health and Epidemiology).
    My main research interests are in population and evolutionary genetics, molecular and evolutionary epidemiology, molecular systematics and genomics, bioinformatics and conservation biology. I am currently working on the molecular evolutionary epidemiology of different pathogens, mainly RNA viruses, such as hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and bacteria, such as Legionella pneumophila, Treponema pallidum, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Our basic approach is the analysis of nucleotide sequence variability at different levels, from intrapatient to world-wide samples, and from particular genes to complete genomes, depending on the specific goals of the different projects. Previously I have studied the population and evolutionary biology of Mediterranean endemic Limonium (Plumbaginaceae) species, by using an array of genetic markers (RAPDs, AFLPs, microsatellites, isozymes) and including the analysis of quantitative traits. I have published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers and written two books.