Evolutionary models to decypher the genetic bases of aging and cancer.
I work at the intersection of macroevolutionary genome–phenome mapping and comparative genomics, using large-scale evolutionary patterns to connect genetic change to complex phenotypes. My research focuses primarily on primates and other mammals, where their rich diversity and well-characterized biology provide a powerful framework to study how genomes shape traits across deep evolutionary time.
A central goal of my work is to uncover the genetic basis of cancer, aging, and degenerative diseases, by leveraging cross-species comparisons to identify recurrent molecular signatures linked to disease risk and resilience. Alongside this research, I develop computational tools to enable and scale these analyses, including software for detecting convergent amino acid substitutions (CAAStools) and methods to quantify shifts in continuous phenotypes in a phylogenetic context.
Selected Publications
List updated on January 2026. For the full list, please visit my Google Scholar.
Fabio Barteri, Alejandro Valenzuela, Xavier Farré, David de Juan, Gerard Muntané, Borja Esteve-Altava, and Arcadi Navarro. 2023. “CAAStools: A Toolbox to Identify and Test Convergent Amino Acid Substitutions.” Bioinformatics 39 (10): btad623. https://doi.org/10.1093/bioinformatics/btad623.
Valenzuela, Alejandro*, Fabio Barteri*, Lukas Kuderna, Joseph Orkin, Jean Boubli, Amanda Melin, Hafid Laayouni, et al. Posted September 8, 2025. “A Phylogenetic Protein-Coding Genome-Phenome Map of Complex Traits across 224 Primate Species.” bioRxiv. https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.09.08.674744.
Fabio Barteri and Borja Esteve-Altava. 2020. “The Role of Transposable Elements in Congenital Malformations with Notes on Their Potential Implications for Morphological Evolution in Mammals.” Current Molecular Biology Reports 6: 71–78. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40610-020-00134-z.
Farré, Xavier, Ruben Molina, Fabio Barteri, Paul R. H. J. Timmers, Peter K. Joshi, Baldomero Oliva, Sandra Acosta, Borja Esteve-Altava, Arcadi Navarro, and Gerard Muntané. 2021. “Comparative Analysis of Mammal Genomes Unveils Key Genomic Variability for Human Life Span.” Molecular Biology and Evolution 38 (11): 4948–4961. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab219.
Santos-Pujol, Eloy, Aleix Noguera-Castells, Marta Casado-Pelaez, Carlos A. García-Prieto, Claudia Vasallo, Ignacio Campillo-Marcos, (...) Salvador Macip, Eva Brigos-Barril, Mauricio Moldes, Fabio Barteri, Gerard Muntané, Hafid Laayouni, Arcadi Navarro, and Manel Esteller. 2025. “The Multiomics Blueprint of the Individual with the Most Extreme Lifespan.” Cell Reports Medicine 6 (10): 102368. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.xcrm.2025.102368.
Alioto, Tyler, Konstantinos G. Alexiou, Amélie Bardil, Fabio Barteri, Raúl Castanera, Fernando Cruz, Amit Dhingra, et al. 2020. “Transposons Played a Major Role in the Diversification between the Closely Related Almond and Peach Genomes: Results from the Almond Genome Sequence.” The Plant Journal 101 (2): 455–472. https://doi.org/10.1111/tpj.14538.
