Dr. Phil Arevalo uses a combination of mathematical modeling and computational tools to reveal the forces that drive the diversification and evolution of microbial genomes. His current research covers clarifying the tangled histories of genes in bacterial genomes.

Bacterial genomes are amazingly dynamic, with genes being lost, gained, and transferred again and again. As a whole, microbial species have access to an extensive toolbox of genes, but no one single strain possesses every single tool. Why are some genes present in all members of a species? Why are other genes only present in a small subset of strains? Using the vast array of bacterial genomes that have been sequenced, we can begin to answer these questions and test the limitations of current genomic theory.