Ángel Pérez DizUniversity of Vigo | UVIGO · Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Immunology
Ángel Pérez Diz
PhD
Evolutionary and Reproductive Biology, Speciation, Hybridisation, DUI, Sex Determination, Molluscs, Genomics, Proteomics
About
57
Publications
35,658
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1,134
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
I am associate professor at University of Vigo working in evolutionary biology. My research interests fit into the following topics: functional consequences of genetic changes, molecular mechanisms underlying reproductive isolation, adaptation and speciation, reproductive biology, doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) of mtDNA, nuclear and mitochondrial genome coevolution, and effects of climate change and pollution in marine organisms by using a multi-omics approach.
Additional affiliations
May 2019 - present
December 2017 - April 2019
October 2015 - November 2015
Education
March 2000 - May 2005
Publications
Publications (57)
Many bivalves have an unusual mechanism of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) inheritance called doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI) in which distinctly different genomes are inherited through the female (F genome) and male (M genome) lineages. In fertilized eggs that will develop into male embryos, the sperm mitochondria remain in an aggregation, which is...
The exposed and sheltered ecotypes of the marine snail Littorina saxatilis from European rocky shores are considered a key model system to study adaptation and ecological speciation. Previous studies showed that two ecotypes (RB and SU) of this species in NW Spain have adapted differently to different shore levels and microhabitats. In order to und...
The study of the proteome (proteomics), which includes the dynamics of protein expression, regulation, interactions and its function, has played a less prominent role in evolutionary and ecological investigations in comparison with the study of the genome and transcriptome. There are, however, a number of arguments suggesting that this situation sh...
In quantitative proteomics work, the differences in expression of many separate proteins are routinely examined to test for significant differences between treatments. This leads to the multiple hypothesis testing problem: when many separate tests are performed many will be significant by chance and be false positive results. Statistical methods su...
Study of the genetic basis of gene expression variation is central to attempts to understand the causes of evolutionary change. Although there are many transcriptomics studies estimating genetic variance and heritability in model organisms such as humans there is a lack of equivalent proteomics studies. In the present study, the heritability underl...
Increased heavy rainfall can reduce salinity to values close to 0 in estuaries. Lethal and sublethal physiological and behavioural effects of decreases in salinity below ten have already been found to occur in the commercially important clam species Venerupis corrugata, Ruditapes decussatus and R. philippinarum and the cockle Cerastoderma edule, wh...
Quantitative proteomic changes in the liver of adult males of Sheepshead minnow (Cyprinodon variegatus) upon exposure to ethinyl estradiol (EE2) were assessed to provide an advanced understanding of the metabolic pathways affected by estrogenic endocrine disruption in marine fish, and to identify potential novel molecular biomarkers for the environ...
The toxicological status of bisphenol A (BPA) is under strong debate. Whereas in vitro it is an agonist of the estrogen receptor with a potency ca. 10⁵-fold lower than the natural female hormone estradiol, in vivo exposure causes only mild effects at concentration thresholds environmentally not relevant and inconsistent among species. By using a pr...
Histopathological analysis of soft-shell clams Mya arenaria collected from 2 northwest Russian locations disclosed high prevalence of 2 pathological gill conditions. One involved the occurrence of more or less extended gill areas in which the branchial filaments showed hyperchromatic (basophilic) epithelium with some hypertrophied nuclei, which wer...
In recent years, the immune response of mussels (Mytilus galloprovincialis) has been studied at the transcriptomic level against several bacterial infections. As a result, different immune mechanisms have been revealed, including both conserved essential innate pathways and particularities of the mussel immune response according to its nature and e...
Proteomic analysis was carried out on the Crab (upper-shore) and Wave (lower-shore) ecotypes of Littorina saxatilis from a hybrid zone at Silleiro Cape, Spain. Proteome profiles of individual snails were obtained. Protein expression in F1 hybrid snails bred in the laboratory and snails with intermediate shell phenotypes collected from the mid-shore...
During the last decade, we have witnessed outstanding advances in proteomics led mostly by great technological improvements in mass spectrometry field allowing high-throughput production of high-quality data used for massive protein identification and quantification. From a practical viewpoint, these advances have been mainly exploited in research...
Vitellogenin (Vtg), a large multidomain protein precursor of egg-yolk proteins, is used as an endocrine disruption biomarker in fish, and in the last decades, its use has been extended to invertebrates like mollusks. However, it remains unclear whether invertebrate endocrine system produces Vtg in response to estrogens, like it occurs in oviparous...
Organophosphate flame retardants (OPFRs) are (re-)emergent environmental pollutants increasingly being used because of the restriction of other flame retardants. The chlorinated OPFR, tris(1,3-dichloro-2-propyl) phosphate (TDCPP) is among those of highest environmental concern, but its potential effects in the marine environment have rarely been in...
A wide variety of endocrine disrupting chemicals reach the marine environment and can cause harmful effects in different marine organisms. Vitellogenin (Vtg), the egg-yolk precursor, is a commonly used endocrine disruption biomarker in fish and more recently in marine invertebrates under the assumption of high expected similarities in the endocrine...
Blue mussels of the genus Mytilus form extensive hybrid zones in the North Atlantic and elsewhere where the distributions of different species overlap. Mytilus species transmit both maternal and paternal mtDNA through egg and sperm, respectively, a process known as doubly uniparental inheritance (DUI), and some females produce
offspring with extrem...
The mussels Mytilus edulis and Mytilus galloprovincialis are marine organisms with external fertilization able to hybridize where their distributions overlap allowing the study of reproductive isolation mechanisms in nature. We provide raw data of a transcriptomic analysis of mature male gonads from these two Mytilus spp. using NGS (Illumina) techn...
Speciation mechanisms in marine organisms have attracted great interest because of the apparent lack of substantial barriers to genetic exchange in marine ecosystems. Marine mussels of the Mytilus edulis species complex provide a good model to study mechanisms underlying species formation. They hybridise extensively at many localities and both pre-...
Many bivalve species have two types of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) passed independently through the female line (F genome) and male line (M genome). Here we study the Cytochrome oxidase I (COI) protein in such bivalve species and provide evidence for differences between the F and M proteins in amino acid property values, particularly relating to hydr...
Vitellogenin (vtg), the egg-yolk precursor in female oviparous animals, is used as a biomarker of estrogenic endocrine disruption due to its induction by xenoestrogenic pollutants, and specially to its anomalous appearance in males. A common indirect technique for quantification of vtg is the measure of alkali labile phosphates (ALP) [1], but the m...
Rocky intertidal organisms are commonly exposed to environmental gradients, promoting adaptations to these conditions. Emersion time varies along the intertidal range and in the supralittoral zone is frequently larger than a single tidal cycle, even lasting for weeks. The planktonic-dispersing gastropod Melarhaphe neritoides is a common species of...
Vitellogenin (Vtg), the egg-yolk precursor in female oviparous animals, is used as a biomarker of estrogenic endocrine disruption due to its increase after exposure to xenoestrogenic pollutants, and specially to its anomalous appearance in males. A common indirect technique for Vtg analysis is the measure of alkali labile phosphates (ALP), a method...
In small organisms where gene expression analyses are accomplished on whole specimens rather than individual tissues, the differences observed in gene expression levels between groups of samples are assumed to be caused by regulatory differences in gene expression within tissues. An alternative explanation is the lack of homogeneity distribution of...
The proteome can be regarded as a molecular phenotype, as changes in protein expression patterns have a direct effect on organismal physiology and fitness. The analysis of the proteome can therefore be an invaluable tool for our understanding of the mechanisms underlying phenotypic changes in response to environmental change. However, proteomic stu...
The intertidal zone represents an interesting model system to study adaptation because several ecological factors change abruptly across this area, causing strong divergent selective pressures on a scale of meters. On the Galician shore (NW Spain), 3 species (Littorina saxatilis, Nucella lapillus and Melarhaphe neritoides) show similar adaptation t...
Proteomic analysis on sperm has been restricted to only a few model organisms. We present here a 2DE PAGE proteome map of sperm cells from a nonmodel organism, the marine mussel Mytilus edulis, a free-spawning marine invertebrate with external fertilization. Ninety-six protein spots showing high expression were selected and of these 77 were success...
Littorina fabalis is an intertidal snail commonly living on the brown algae Fucus vesiculosus and showing frequent shell-color polymorphisms in the wild. The evolutionary mechanism underlying this polymorphism is currently unknown. Shell color variation was studied in mated and non-mated specimens of this species from different microareas in one lo...
In the marine gastropod Littorina saxatilis differences in relative shell apertural form between two ecotypes from NW Spain have been associated with an environmental cline related to the degree of wave exposure. Such differences have been claimed to have a strong genetic basis, with little influence of phenotypic plasticity. However, dietary chang...
The sinking of the tanker Prestige in November 2002 off the coast of Galicia resulted in the release of about 60,000 tons of heavy oil. The oil-spill provoked a serious environmental impact in Spanish and French coasts, which biological consequences are still being assessed. In this study we address the temporal dynamics of genetic diversity in som...
In quantitative proteomics work, the differences in expression of many separate proteins are routinely examined to test for significant differences between treatments. This leads to the multiple hypothesis testing problem: when many separate tests are performed many will be significant by chance and be false positive results. Statistical methods su...
Pooling of samples in proteomics experiments might help overcome resource constraints when many individuals are analysed. The measured biological variation should be reduced giving increased power to detect treatment differences. Pooling has been advocated in microarray work but there are few tests of its potential in proteomics. In this study, we...
The culture of Mytilus galloprovincialis in Galician Rías (NW Iberian estuaries) is a milestone for the aquaculture development in Spain. Despite the significant advances made on several biological aspects of this species, no detailed phylogeographic studies have been carried out locally to determine how its genetic diversity is distributed among R...
The Almería-Oran Oceanographic Front (AOOF) has been proposed as an effective marine barrier to gene flow between the NE Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea for several species. Previous studies using allozymes and mitochondrial DNA have reported a scenario of secondary intergradation between populations of Mytilus galloprovincialis from those...
Protein expression patterns were compared in mussels from a hybrid zone between the two species Mytilus edulis and M. galloprovincialis using 2-DE. Significant differences in expression pattern were observed between species and between mussels within species. Hybrid mussels had more variable protein expression patterns than mussels of each species....
Blue mussels of the genus Mytilus (M. edulis Linnaeus 1758; M. galloprovincialis Lamarck 1819; M. trossulus Gould 1850) are widely distributed in Southern and Northern hemispheres. This ecological plasticity together with the existence of interspecific hybridization in overlapping regions (Skibinski et al. 1978) makes them an interesting model for...
Projects
Projects (2)
Study the role played by Gamete recognition proteins in sympatric speciation processes
Dear colleagues,
We are pleased to announce the AMMR 2016 symposium, which will be held at the University of Vigo – Faculty of Biology, Vigo (Spain). This symposium aims to highlight the latest research on marine mussels (Mytilus spp.) from a multidisciplinary perspective, including studies from the fields of genomics, proteomics, immunology, physiology, ecology and aquaculture among others. Marine mussels represent an excellent study system in evolutionary biology, ecology, ecotoxicology, climate change and more importantly, they are a key species in aquaculture, being commercialised worldwide.
The symposium will include 7 talks from the invited speakers, 5 short talks from participants and a poster session on Wednesday 26. On Thursday 27 we will have a boat trip to Cies Islands.
Invited Speakers:
Nicolas BIERNE, University of Montpellier (France)
Carlos CANCHAYA, University of Vigo (Spain)
Ibon CANCIO, University of the Basque Country (Spain)
Antonio FIGUERAS, IIM CSIC (Spain)
Beatriz NOVOA, IIM CSIC (Spain)
David SKIBINSKI, Swansea University (UK)
Antonio VILLALBA, CIMA – Xunta de Galicia (Spain)
Organizers:
Angel Pérez Diz, University of Vigo
Juan Galindo, University of Vigo
Armando Caballero, University of Vigo
Antonio Villanueva, ECIMAT – University of Vigo
For more information about the symposium:
http://advmusselres16.webs.uvigo.es/home.html
contact: advmusselres16@uvigo.es
APPLICATION DEADLINE 20 October 2016
