Born in Vinaròs (1961). Professor of Genetics at the School of Biological Sciences. He got a degree in Biological Sciences (Biochemistry) and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Valencia, with an extraordinary doctorate award.
His scientific career began as a predoctoral fellow of the Generalitat Valenciana at the University of Valencia. He did a two-year postdoctoral stay in the laboratory of Prof. Francisco J. Ayala from the University of California at Irvine (USA), and short stays as a visiting professor at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Kgs. Lyngby, Denmark, and at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil. He was a researcher for 14 years at the “Cavanilles” Institute for Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology, of the University of Valencia, and in the last eight years, he has been a researcher in the Systems Biology of yeasts of biotechnological interest Group at the Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology (IATA), CSIC, through an agreement between  CSIC and the University of Valencia.
During his research career, he has worked in different lines of research such as the molecular evolution of Drosophila, the evolution of RNA viruses, and the role of chaperonins in bacterial endosymbiosis. In recent years, his research work has focused on the study, through comparative genomics and the analysis of 'omic' data, of the molecular mechanisms involved in the generation of genetic innovations that explain the adaptation of yeasts of the genus Saccharomyces in fermentative environments, responsible for their properties of biotechnological interest.
He has participated in 26 competitive research projects, of which 9 as principal investigator. He is the author of more than one hundred articles in international journals indexed in the Science Citation Index. He has mentored 12 doctoral theses, supervised 3 postdoctoral researchers, and has been recognized for five six-year years periods of research.
His teaching activity currently focuses on subjects in the degrees in Biology and Biochemistry and Biomedical Sciences, in addition to the master's degree in R&D in Biotechnology and Biomedicine. He participated in the creation of the Master's Degree in Bioinformatics, being a member of its academic coordination committee for more than five years. He has six recognized five-year teaching periods. He was a member of the Senate of the University of Valencia and the faculty board of the School of Biological Sciences, during different periods.[Biography, English version]

PhD in Pharmacy from the Universitat de València (1991), I did a postdoctoral stay of more than 3 years at the Eccles Institute of Human Genetics (University of Utah, USA). After 15 years dedicated to the study of the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae from almost any point of view (study of the cell wall, model system for the study of human tumor suppressor genes, analysis of stress and contamination in brewing yeast or global gene expression in wine yeasts), I joined the field of bacterial genomic evolution, in which I have been working since 2001 as a member of the Evolutionary Genetics group of the Universitat de València, where I am currently Associate Professor of Genetics.

I do my research at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology (I2SysBio), a joint collaborative center Universitat de València - CSIC. My current work focuses on the study of the genome of endosymbiotic bacteria, which live inside specialized cells of  insect with restricted diets (such as aphids, weevils or mealybugs), to understand the relationship between these bacteria and their hosts, the bacterial genome reduction in these conditions, and its consequences for the inferred metabolic network. As a complement to these studies, I am also involved in studies on the definition of the minimal genome, essential for the maintenance of a living cell, and its implications in the field of Synthetic Biology. In this sense, in recent years we have started a new research line  in which we use the bacterial species Bartonella quintana as an endosymbiotic model for the design of a chassis that can be used in Synthetic Biology for therapeutic purposes.

Current research projects

Basic and applied approaches to unravel and modify model symbiotic systems. PGC2018-099344-B-I00 (co-financed by FEDER funds and Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades, Spain)

Evolution, experimental epidemiology and therapeutic engineering of the microbiota. PROMETEO/2018/133 (Generalitat Valenciana, Spain).

Recent and selected publications

Solana, J., E. Garrote-Sánchez and R. Gil (2021). DELEAT: gene essentiality prediction and deletion design for bacterial genome reduction. BMC Bioinformatics 22:444. doi:10.1186/s12859-021-04348-5 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12859-021-04348-5

Domínguez-Santos, R., A. E. Pérez-Cobas, P. Cuti, V. Pérez-Brocal, C. García-Ferris, A. Moya, A. Latorre, R. Gil (2021). Interkingdom gut microbiome and resistome of the cockroach Blattella germanica. mSystems 6:e01213-20. doi: 10.1128/mSystems.01213-20

Reyes-Prieto, M., R. Gil, M. Llabrés, P. Palmer-Rodríguez, A. Moya (2021). The metabolic building blocks of a minimal cell. Biology, 10:5. doi: 10.3390/biology10010005

Gil, R., A. Latorre (2019). Unity makes strength: a review on mutualistic symbiosis in representative insect clades. Life 9: 21; doi:10.3390/life9010021.

Gil, R., C. Vargas-Chavez, S. López-Madrigal, D. Santos-García, A. Latorre, A. Moya (2018). Tremblaya phenacola PPER: An evolutionary beta-gammaproteobacterium collage. ISME J. 12:124-135. doi: 10.1038/ismej.2017.144

López-Madrigal, S., R. Gil (2017). Et tu, Brute? Not even intracellular mutualistic symbionts escape horizontal gene transfer. Genes 8:247. doi: 10.3390/genes8100247

Lloréns-Rico, V., J. Cano, T. Kamminga, R. Gil, A. Latorre, W. H. Chen, P. Bork, J. I. Glass, L. Serrano, M. Lluch-Senar (2016). Bacterial antisense RNAs are mainly the product of transcriptional noise. Sci. Adv. 2:e1501363. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501363

Klein, A., L. Schrader, R. Gil, A. Manzano-Marín, L. Flórez, D. Wheeler, J. H. Werren, A. Latorre, J. Heinze, M. Kaltenpoth, A. Moya, J. Oettler (2016). A novel intracellular mutualistic bacterium in the invasive ant Cardiocondyla obscurior. ISME J. 10:376-388. doi: 10.1038/ismej.2015.119

Martínez-Díaz, V., A. Latorre, R. Gil (2016). Seasonal changes in the endosymbiotic consortia of aphids from the genus Cinara. Microbes Environ. 31:137-144. doi: 10.1264/jsme2.ME15118

Gil, R., J. Peretó (2015). Small genomes and the difficulty to define minimal translation and metabolic machineries. Front. Ecol. Evol. 3:123. doi: 10.3389/fevo.2015.00123

López-Madrigal, S., A. Latorre, A. Moya, R. Gil (2015). The link between independent acquisition of intracellular gamma-endosymbionts and concerted evolution in Tremblaya princeps. Front. Microbiol. 6:642. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2015.00642

Gil, R. (2014). The minimal gene-set machinery. In Encyclopedia of Molecular Cell Biology and Molecular Medicine: Synthetic Biology, 2nd edition. Meyers RA (ed.). Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. pp. 1-36. doi: 10.1002/3527600906.mcb.20130079

López-Madrigal, S., A. Beltrà, S. Resurrección, A. Soto, A. Latorre, A. Moya, R. Gil (2014). Molecular evidence for ongoing complementarity and horizontal gene transfer in endosymbiotic systems of mealybugs. Front. Microbiol. 5:449. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2014.00449

Oakeson, K. F.*, R. Gil*, A. L. Clayton, D. M. Dunn, A. C. von Niederhausern, C. Hamil, A. Aoyagi, B. Duval, A. Baca, F.J. Silva, A. Vallier, D. G. Jackson, A. Latorre, R. B. Weiss, A. Heddi, A. Moya, C. Dale (2014). Genome degeneration and adaptation in a nascent stage of symbiosis. Genome Biol. Evol. 6:76-93. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evt210 *Equal contribution.

López-Madrigal, S., A. Latorre, M. Porcar, A. Moya, R. Gil (2013). Mealybugs nested endosymbiosis: going into the ‘matryoshka’system in Planococcus citri in depth. BMC Microbiol. 13:74. doi: 10.1186/1471-2180-13-74

Moya, A., R. Gil, A. Latorre., J. Peretó, M.P. Garcillán-Barcia, F. de la Cruz (2009). Towards minimal bacterial cells: evolution versus design. FEMS Microbiol. Rev. 33:225-235. doi: 10.1111/j.1574-6976.2008.00151.x

Moya, A., J. Peretó, R. Gil, A. Latorre (2008). Learning how to live together: genomic insights into prokaryote-animal symbioses. Nature Rev. Genet. 9:218-229. doi: 10.1038/nrg2319

Tamames, J.*, R. Gil*, A. Latorre, J. Peretó, F.J. Silva, A. Moya (2006). The frontier between cell and organelle: genome analysis of Candidatus Carsonella ruddii. Science 314:312-313. doi: 10.1186/1471-2148-7-181 *Equal contribution.

T. Gabaldón, J. Peretó, F. Montero, R. Gil, A. Latorre, A. Moya (2007). Structural analyses of a hypothetical minimal metabolism. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B. Biol. Sci. 362:1751-1762. doi:  10.1098/rstb.2007.2067

Pérez-Brocal, V., R. Gil, S. Ramos, A. Lamelas, M. Postigo, J. M. Michelena, F. J. Silva, A. Moya, A. Latorre (2006). A small microbial genome: the end of a long symbiotic relationship? Science 314:312-313. doi: 10.1126/science.1130441

Gil, R., F. J. Silva, J. Peretó, A. Moya (2004). Determination of the core of the minimal bacterial gene set. Microbiol. Mol. Biol. Rev. 68: 518-537. doi: 10.1128/MMBR.68.3.518-537.2004

Gil, R., B. Sabater-Muñoz, A. Latorre, F. J. Silva, A. Moya (2002). Extreme genome reduction in Buchnera spp.: towards the minimal genome needed for symbiotic life. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99: 4454-4458. doi: 10.1073/pnas.062067299

Fernando Gonzalez Candelas, PhD (University of Valencia, 1987) is Professor of Genetics at the University of Valencia since 2006 and head of the “Evolution and Health” Research Unit at the Institute for Integrative Systems Biology UV-CSIC (I2SysBio) at the same university. In addition, he has a joint appointment at the FISABIO-Public Health through the joint research unit “Infection and Public Health” with the University of Valencia and at the CIBERESP (Centre for Networked Research on Biomedicine – Public Health and Epidemiology).
    My main research interests are in population and evolutionary genetics, molecular and evolutionary epidemiology, molecular systematics and genomics, bioinformatics and conservation biology. I am currently working on the molecular evolutionary epidemiology of different pathogens, mainly RNA viruses, such as hepatitis C virus (HCV) and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and bacteria, such as Legionella pneumophila, Treponema pallidum, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Klebsiella pneumoniae. Our basic approach is the analysis of nucleotide sequence variability at different levels, from intrapatient to world-wide samples, and from particular genes to complete genomes, depending on the specific goals of the different projects. Previously I have studied the population and evolutionary biology of Mediterranean endemic Limonium (Plumbaginaceae) species, by using an array of genetic markers (RAPDs, AFLPs, microsatellites, isozymes) and including the analysis of quantitative traits. I have published more than 250 peer-reviewed scientific papers and written two books.