‘La mare de la ciència’, the science dissemination podcast in Catalan of the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park (PRBB) was born with the aim of giving a voice to people who do science, whatever their position in the research group. And today, we review the story of the youngest protagonist of this first session.
Clàudia Fontserè Alemany has completed her doctorate in the comparative genomics group of the Institute for Evolutionary Biology (IBE: CSIC-UPF), where she has studied the genomics of chimpanzees, an endangered species of primate.
In the last twenty years, eight out of ten chimpanzees have disappeared from the world, either due to habitat destruction, illegal trafficking or poaching. Issues that the scientific community is trying to reverse using different disciplines, including conservation genomics.
“Genomics is a phenomenal tool for studying how species have changed over time”, says Clàudia. And it also lets you see if a species is threatened. Because, to be healthy, a population needs variability. And if this is lost, the options for adapting to the environment are diminishing.
Evolution, genomics and biodiversity share the minutes of this episode with the story of Clàudia’s experience as a doctoral student. A period in which she has devoted herself to learning laboratory techniques and doing data analysis, but also understanding how the world of academia works, and something really important to her: communicating the results obtained.
Don’t miss her testimony!
