Zachary is an evolutionary biologist investigating the evolution and functions of young genes in pathogenic bacteria and viruses, working as a SEED fellow (Sanger Epidemiological and Evolutionary Dynamics)
I am a post-doctoral Research Associate at the Virology Division in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge working with Dr. Andrew Firth.
I am a versatile postdoctoral researcher with extensive experience in Mycobacterial genomics. The primary focus of my research is investigating the transmission dynamics of various bacterial species including Mycobacterium bovis in a multi-host system and non-tuberculous Mycobacteria in a hospital setting. Alongside my research I also have an interest in developing reproducible bioinformatics workflows using state of the art tools such as Nextflow.
Nathanael is interested in evolutionary novelty, particularly in complex biochemical traits. He investigates the contribution of various sources of variation, especially gene duplication, to evolutionary innovations, using phylogenetics, comparative genomics and gene expression analysis. He is particularly interested in synthesising systems biology and co-expression network techniques to understand how complex traits evolve. He is also interested in core phylogenetic theory, including gene tree conflict, phylogenetic information content, and non-homogeneous evolutionary models.
