The Van de Peer lab is running a joint lab at the Nanjing Agricultural University in China led by Jia-Yu Xue. Frequent student exchanges between the labs foster learning opportunities, and promote the sharing of diverse research techniques and perspectives.

The Van de Peer lab is running a joint lab in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at the University of Pretoria in South-Africa.

We study polyploidy from various theoretical perspectives. Theory building and applying theoretical models from related field is a very valuable part of the cycle of scientific research, which complements our empirical research. By framing observations in a robust and transparent representation of the biological world, we can question our understanding in future research using our model systems.

Thousands of species are currently polyploid, possessing more than two complete sets of chromosomes. However, the long-term establishment of organisms that have undergone ancient whole genome duplications (WGDs) has been exceedingly rare and when we analyse the genomes of plants and animals, we can, at most, find evidence for a very limited number of WGDs that survived on the longer term. The paucity of (established) ancient genome duplications and the existence of so many species that are currently polyploid provides a fascinating paradox.

Constituting approximately 10% of flowering plant species, orchids (Orchidaceae) display unique flower morphologies, possess an extraordinary diversity in lifestyle, and have successfully colonized almost every habitat on Earth.