16-12-2025
Baye’s work focused on horizontal gene transfer (HGT)—a very rare evolutionary process in eukaryotes that allows different species to exchange genetic material. During his thesis, Baye developed a new pipeline to automatically detect HGT-derived genes in a group of yeasts (kingdom Fungi) that live on bees and flowers.
This lineage was already known to have unusually high levels of HGT based on the analyses of a handful of genomes. Using his newly developed pipeline, Baye expanded the analysis to more than 70 species and confirmed that these organisms indeed show exceptionally high rates of HGT.
In silico functional annotation of the transferred genes, revealed that many of them are involved in key metabolic processes and may have played an important role in helping these species adapt to life in the floral environment.
This work was carried out at the Yeast genomics Research Lab, at the DCV.
Congratulations, Baye!
