This is the website of the dos Reis Lab research group @ QMUL. You can contact us at m.dosreisbarros@qmul.ac.uk.

Research in the dos Reis Lab is focused on the development and application of statistical methods in phylogenetics. We are particularly interested in using Bayesian statistics to infer times of species divergences (that is, in placing geological times of divergence on the Tree of Life), and on methods to measure the strength of natural selection in molecular sequences. You can see examples of our research in the Key Publications below.

Our Research in the Media

Our research has been highlighted in the media an in textbooks! You can see some examples below:

• Sandra’s YouTube interview where she discusses her work reconstructing the timeline of mammal evolution. You can red the original paper here.

• Ed Young for the Scientist, and Ewen Callaway for Nature, discuss our analysis of the timing of mammal evolution after the K-Pg extinction. You can read our original paper here.

• Ridiculously Cute Mouse Lemurs Hold key to Madagascar’s Past in National Geographic, discusses the work we did in collaboration with Anne Yoder’s group (Duke University) on how timing divergences in mouse lemur species can be used to understand Madagascar’s past. You can read the original paper here, and our blog post.

• Our work on influenza is featured in Herron and Freeman’s Evolutionary Analysis, on the molecular clock in Yang’s Molecular Evolution: A Statistical Approach and on codon bias in Lynch’s The Origins of Genome Architecture.

• We have provided comment for The Guardian on the molecular clock of parrots.

Key Publications

• A species-level timeline of mammal evolution integrating phylogenomic data
  Sandra Álvarez-Carretero, Asif U. Tamuri, Matteo Battini, Fabrícia F. Nascimento, Emily Carlisle, Robert J. Asher, Ziheng Yang, Philip C. J. Donoghue, and Mario dos Reis. (2022) Nature, 602: 263–267.
  DOI: 10.1038/s41586-021-04341-1 RedCube (no paywall): rdcu.be/cDHW7

• A mutation-selection model of protein evolution under persistent positive selection
  Tamuri, AU, and dos Reis, M. (2022) Molecular Biology and Evolution, 39: msab309.
  DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msab309

• Bayesian molecular clock dating of species divergences in the genomics era
  dos Reis M, Donoghue PCJ and Yang Z. (2016) Nature Reviews Genetics, 17: 71–80.
  DOI: 10.1038/nrg.2015.8

• Uncertainty in the timing of origin of animals and the limits of precision in molecular timescales
  dos Reis M, Thawornwattana Y, Angelis K, Telford M, Donoghue PCJ and Yang Z. (2015) Current Biology, 25: 2939–2950.
  DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.09.066

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Updated April 2023