Research group

Research in the MBE group, led by Prof. Karine Van Doninck, involves topics at the core of evolutionary biology, including the evolution of sex, genome maintenance, recombination, and extreme stress resistance. The group employes different tools, including experimental evolution, population genetics, phylogeny, comparative genomics, transcriptomics, bioinformatics, and molecular biology, to study evolutionary processes at both population and genome levels across various animal systems.

Recently, Karine Van Doninck and her team have started to address questions at the postgenomic, cellular and molecular level to investigate the mechanisms behind extreme resistance, using bdelloid rotifers as a model system to study resilience to desiccation, freezing and ionizing radiation. Her research unit at ULB, oriented towards Molecular Biology and Evolution (MBE), excels ininterdisciplinary approaches, which has led to significant recognition, including the prestigious ERC Consolidator grant.

 Within her ESA RISE project in collaboration with UNamur, Karine Van Doninck’s team explores the extreme resistance of different bdelloid rotifer species, focusing on their survival and DNA repair in space environment, both inside and outside the international space station (ISS).