We study the evolution of genes, genomes and (polyploid) organisms

Yves Van de Peer is Full Professor at Ghent University and Science Director of the VIB, Center for Plant Systems Biology (Ghent, Belgium). He obtained his PhD in 1996 at the University of Antwerp, Belgium. After a postdoctoral fellowship with Axel Meyer at the University of Konstanz, Germany, he was hired at Ghent University (BE) as Group Leader of VIB (Department of Plant Systems Biology) in 2000 and as an Associate Professor at Ghent University in 2001 and promoted to Full Professor in 2008. Yves Van de Peer’s research group is considered a genome analysis powerhouse specialized in the study of the structure and evolution of (plant) genomes. Because of their unique expertise and experience in gene prediction, genome annotation, and genome analysis, his research group has been, and still is, involved in many international genome projects. Yves Van de Peer is particularly interested in the study of gene and genome duplications as well as in the evolution of novel gene functions after duplication. Yves Van de Peer published more than 550 papers, many of which in high-profile journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Reviews Genetics, Science, PNAS, Genome Research, and The Plant Cell. Yves Van de Peer has an H-index > 135 and his work has been cited more than 90,000 times (google scholar). For many consecutive years, Yves Van de Peer has been a Highly Cited Researcher. In 2013, Yves Van de Peer received an ERC Advanced Grant entitled “DOUBLE-UP: The evolutionary significance of genome duplications for natural and artificial organism populations”, and in 2018 another one entitled “DOUBLE-TROUBLE: Replaying the ‘genome duplication’ tape of life: the adaptive potential of polyploidy in a stressful or changing environment”. Yves Van de Peer has been Organizer and Chair of the bi-annual international Current Opinion Conference on Plant Genome Evolution, held in 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017, and 2019. In 2019, Yves Van de Peer also organized the triannual International Conference on Polyploidy, Ghent, Belgium. Yves Van de Peer is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts (KVAB; since 2012) and serves on the Editorial Boards of five international journals (The Plant Journal, PeerJ, Genome Biology and Evolution, Current Plant Biology, Frontiers in Genetics). Yves Van de Peer is also part-time professor at the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology, at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and at the College of Horticulture at Nanjing Agricultural University, China.

Assistant Professor, Comparative Genomics & Evolutionary Biology

I am an Assistant Professor at Ghent University and a Staff Scientist at the VIB-UGent Center for Plant Systems Biology, where I am dedicated to contribute to comparative genomics and evolutionary biology. My scientific journey began and continues to evolve within the Van de Peer lab, where I also completed my PhD. I remain closely affiliated with the lab while running my own research projects to explore plant genome evolution and the genomic changes driving biodiversity. My current ongoing project explores how gene loss, traditionally seen as regressive, can actually drive adaptation and innovation in plants. I am particularly interested in how the loss of genes shapes evolutionary trajectories, restructures biological networks, and contributes to the emergence of new traits. I have investigated these dynamics across diverse plant lineages, from tracing gene loss after whole-genome duplications to uncovering adaptive gene losses in mycoheterotrophic orchids. I recently secured an FWO research project grant to further investigate the evolutionary significance of gene loss across plant lineages, developing a framework to analyze over hundreds of genomes across the plant kingdom. In addition, I actively collaborate on projects that span multiple disciplines and involve cutting-edge tools, such as AI-driven phylogenomics and fossil-informed analyses of genome size evolution. I am in the process of building a vibrant, interdisciplinary research team, and through my work, I hope to contribute both to fundamental insights into plant evolution and to practical applications in agriculture and biodiversity conservation.