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Dr. Sebastian Gornik

PhD

Contact Details

Marie Curie Fellow
C/O PROF. URI FRANK
SCHOOL OF NATURAL SCIENCES
2nd FLOOR, BIOSCIENCES RESEARCH
NEWCASTLE ROAD

E: SEBASTIAN.GORNIK@nuigalway.ie
 
researcher

Biography

I work as a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Natural Sciences, NUI Galway since August 2014. I am a junior group leader and current SFI SIRG and Marie-Curie fellow under mentorship of Prof Uri Frank at NUI Galway. I have been a Zoologist and Marine Scientist through my entire career and I worked on the physiology of marine invertebrates during my PhD. To date I have published 20 peer-reviewed papers (9 first-authorships) in various specialist journals (e.g. Marine and Freshwater Behaviour and Physiology, [Impact factor (IF) 1.1]) as well as in a number of renown high-impact journals such as Current Biology [IF 9.9] , PNAS [IF 9.8], Molecular Biology and Evolution [IF 14.3] and eLife [IF 8.5]. Further to this, I worked closely with industry in the past and I co-authored several industry reports. During my PhD at Glasgow University I worked on the physiology and of the Norway lobster (Nephrops norvegicus). The cell biology and evolution of the single-celled marine parasite Hematodinium was the major focus of my post-doctoral studies in Melbourne. Moving to NUI Galway I changed my research focus and now study the role of epigenetics during development of the colony forming marine cnidarian Hydractinia echinata - an emerging invertebrate model system. The current main focus is comparing the biology of this basal animal to the better studied biology of higher animals. Using my extensive bioinformatic skills I also play a pivotal role in the assembly and annotation of 5 dinoflagellates and 2 marine cnidarians genomes and transcriptomes in collaboration with researchers and NIH, the University of Cambridge and KAUST in Saudi Arabia. This work is ongoing.

Peer Reviewed Journals

  Year Publication
(2015) 'Chromerid genomes reveal the evolutionary path from photosynthetic algae to obligate intracellular parasites'
Woo, YH; et al. (2015) 'Chromerid genomes reveal the evolutionary path from photosynthetic algae to obligate intracellular parasites'. eLife, 4 (e06974) [DOI] [Details]
(2015) 'Endosymbiosis undone by stepwise elimination of the plastid in a parasitic dinoflagellate'
Gornik, SG,Febrimarsa,Cassin, AM,MacRae, JI,Ramaprasad, A,Rchiad, Z,McConville, MJ,Bacic, A,McFadden, GI,Pain, A,Waller, RF (2015) 'Endosymbiosis undone by stepwise elimination of the plastid in a parasitic dinoflagellate'. Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 112 :5767-5772 [DOI] [Details]
(2015) 'Andersenia, a genus of filamentous, sand-dwelling Pelagophyceae from southeastern Australia'
Wetherbee, R; Gornik, SG; Grant, B; Waller, RF (2015) 'Andersenia, a genus of filamentous, sand-dwelling Pelagophyceae from southeastern Australia'. Phycologia, 54 (1):35-48 [DOI] [Details]