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Dr. Pedro Martinez-Gomez

Research
CEBAS-CSIC
PO Box, 164, Murcia
 

Brief Biography:


Pedro Martínez-Gómez has a Degree in Agricultural Sciences (University of Lleida, Spain. 1994), a Master of Science in Plant Breeding (International Centre for Advanced Mediterranean Agronomic Studies, Zaragoza, Spain. 1996) and a PhD in Fruit Genetics and Breeding (University of Murcia, Spain. 1998).

During his Pre-doctoral period as PhD student in the Department of Plant Breeding at CEBAS-CSIC of Murcia (Spain) (July 1995 - June 1999) he worked in apricot breeding for sharka (Plum pox virus) resistance. After this period, he spent three years as Post Graduate Research in the Department of Pomology at the University of California-Davis (July 1999 - January 2002) in the subject of peach and almond breeding and biotechnology with professors Thomas Gradziel and Sekar Arulsekar. After this period Dr. Martínez-Gómez starts a tenure track process of four year in the Department of Plant Breeding at CEBAS-CSIC of Murcia (in side the Ramón y Cajal Spanish program) leading a new laboratory for molecular markers application to fruit breeding.

 

Academic positions:


At this moment, he is working as Full Researcher, permanent position obtained in 2005, at CEBAS-CSIC in Murcia (Spain), and in 2008 he ascended into full Scientific Research. He continues his work in Prunus Breeding and Biotechnology.

 

Research interests:


Dr. Martínez-Gómez is an international reference in Prunus Breeding and Biotechnology with 80 papers publish in international journals included in the SCI. He has also presented more than 100 communications to international congress. He has developed more than 40 research project in Spain and in the European Union. In addition, he has developed research project of collaboration with different international institution in USA (University of California-Davis), Canada (University of Guelp), France (INRA of Avignon), Iran (University of Tabriz, ABRII), Chile (Universidad de Chile) and Morroco (University of Marrakech).

 

What I think of the idea behind WebmedCentral:


An integrated genetic, genomic, proteomic and transcriptomic approach to Prunus breeding

The development of new Prunus varieties is a long and tedious process involving the generation of large seedling populations for the selection of the best individuals. While the ability of breeders to generate large populations is almost unlimited, the management, phenotyping (genetic studies) and selection of these seedlings are the main factors limiting the generation of new cultivars. Genomic (DNA) studies for the development of marker-assisted selection (MAS) strategies are particularly useful when the evaluation of the character is expensive or time-consuming or, in tree crops such as Prunus, with long juvenile periods. Recently proteomic and transcriptomic studies have been used for the clarification of the mentioned genomic studies. In this sense, the main objective of my research today is the integrative analysis of the different approaches applied to Prunus breeding including genetic (phenotyping and transmission of agronomic characters), genomic (DNA regions responsible for the different agronomic characters), proteomic (proteins involved in the expression of the characters) and transcriptomic (gene expression analysis of the characters) approaches. First works on transcriptome analysis in Prunus species started in the early 2000s with the development of ESTs (Expressed sequence tags) and the analysis of several candidate genes. Later, new strategies of massive analysis (high throughput) of transcriptomes have been applied, producing larger amounts of data in terms of expression of a large number of genes in a single experiment. One of these systems is massive transcriptome analysis using cDNA biochips (microarrays) to analyze thousands of genes by hybridization of mRNA labeled with fluorescence. However, the recent emergence of a massive sequencing methodology ("deep-sequencing") of the transcriptome (RNA-Seq), based on lowering the costs of DNA sequencing, could be more suitable than the application of microarrays. Although this powerful technology has only been available for a couple of years, it is already making substantial contributions towards understanding genome expression and regulation, mainly in humans, mammals and yeast.

 

Home Page:


www.cebas.csic.es