Pau Navarro
Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Genetics

- The Roslin Institute
- The Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems
Contact details
- Email: Pau.Navarro@ed.ac.uk
Address
- Street
-
The Roslin Institute
Easter Bush Campus - City
- Midlothian
- Post code
- EH25 9RG
- Street
-
The Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems
Charnock Bradley Building
Easter Bush Campus - City
- Midlothian
- Post code
- EH25 9RG
Background
Pau Navarro is a Senior Lecturer in Quantitative Genetics at The Roslin Institute. She studied Agricultural Engineering at the Universitat Politècnica de València and undertook her PhD in Genetics at The Roslin Institute (University of Edinburgh), which she followed with a postdoc in human genetics. She has been an investigator scientist within the Complex Traits group at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh until March 2023. Her research spans livestock, wild population and human genetics and epigenetics.
Her current role has both teaching and research components. Her teaching responsibilities include leading the development and delivery of education activity in the area of Data Driven Animal and Plant Breeding and Genetics linked to The Roslin Institute and The Global Academy of Agriculture and Food Systems.
Qualifications
BSc in Agricultural Engineering (Animal Science), Universitat Politècnica de València, 1999.
PhD in Quantitative Genetics, University of Edinburgh, 2004.
Certificate of Pedagogic Competency, Universitat Politècnica de València, 2009.
Senior Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy, 2022.
Responsibilities & affiliations
External:
Member of the BBSRC People and Talent (PAT) Strategy Advisory Panel Researcher Subgroup (2022-2023)
Internal:
Academic Senate Member (2019 to date)
Undergraduate teaching
Undergraduate Teaching and Supervision
I am not currently involved in undergraduate teaching, but our group has hosted both undergraduate and high school students for short projects. If this is something that interests you, have a look at http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/nuffield-research-placements and get in touch!
Postgraduate teaching
MSc Teaching and Supervision
I teach within of the QGGA MSc and have taught at the IGMM Postgraduate programme. I have also contributed to these programmes and the EPCC HPC MSc through the provision of projects and supervision of students. These often represent the student’s first contact with practical research, and a significant amount of supervision is required to ensure that these projects not only lead to the successful completion of the study programme but also set the foundation stone for a successful career in research, by inculcating good research practice.
PhD Supervision
I have been supervising PhD students, either in formal or informal capacities for more than a decade. Currently, I am supervisor to 6 PhD students.
I have won several awards in relation to my supervisory practice:
IGC CMVM Student Supervision and Support Award, 2021.
Student Experience Award, CMVM Staff Recognition Awards, 2022. [Also nominated for the Collaborator and Outstanding Colleague awards]
Open to PhD supervision enquiries?
Yes
Current PhD students supervised
Michael Baber
Silvia Shen
Jurgis Kuliešius
Mohamed AboelEla
Past PhD students supervised
Caelinn James (examined)
Eilidh Fummey (examined)
Arianna Landini
Linda Repetto
Panagiotis Kokkinias
Bailey Harrington
Richard Oppong
Charley Xia
Reka Nagy
Kate Schraut
Peter Joshi
Alida Kindt
Research summary
My research focuses on the dissection of the complex trait variation of the type that underlies the health, production and reproduction traits in livestock and frequent and high impact human diseases such as cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, glaucoma and mental disorders. I use phenotypic, environmental and ‘omic (including genomic) information recorded in large populations to disentangle the complex trait architecture.
My work has focused on applying and developing tools that allow us to better understand the genetic and environmental architecture underlying complex traits. This is important from a basic biology, clinical and animal breeding viewpoints. Identifying which genes and pathways (or other genomic features) are responsible for trait variation, be it normal or pathological, will enable the design of tailored breeding programmes, unveil pharmacological targets and inform on interventions needed to prevent ill health (if we know an individual has a genetic high risk of suffering a disease, we can put in place measures that counteract this risk). These have important implications both from a welfare and an economic point of view. Some advances have been done towards unveiling regions responsible for variation, and my research has contributed to this. We have also come to the realisation that more powerful analytical and computational tools are needed to further assist in this task and to apply the outcomes of the research to ‘real life’ (for example risk prediction tools in clinical practice). Again, my current research plays an important role in the advancement of the field.
Current research interests
Some examples of my current research include: -Characterisation of DNA methylation variation at population scale and its use to unravel environmental influences on complex traits (including genome by environment interactions) -Development of tools to enable DNA methylation profiling at scale in livestock species. -Use of metabolomic profiling to investigate growth and reproductive traits in sheep.-
Phenome-wide analyses identify an association between the parent-of-origin effects dependent methylome and the rate of aging in humans
(28 pages)
In:
Genome Biology, vol. 24, pp. 1-28
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-023-02953-6
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Impact of mixing between parallel year groups on genomic prediction in Atlantic salmon breeding programmes under random selection
(9 pages)
In:
Aquaculture, vol. 572, pp. 1-9
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aquaculture.2023.739497
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (E-pub ahead of print) -
Phenome-wide analysis identifies parent-of-origin effects on the human methylome associated with changes in the rate of aging
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.18.524653
Research output: › Preprint (Published) -
The impact of SNP density on quantitative genetic analyses of body size traits in a wild population of Soay sheep
(15 pages)
In:
Ecology and Evolution, vol. 12
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.9639
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
A multi-tissue atlas of regulatory variants in cattle: Cattle Genotype-Tissue Expression Atlas
In:
Nature Genetics, vol. 54, pp. 1438-1447
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41588-022-01153-5
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Genetic analyses of the electrocardiographic QT interval and its components identify additional loci and pathways
In:
Nature Communications, vol. 13
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-32821-z
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Genetic regulation of post-translational modification of two distinct proteins
In:
Nature Communications, vol. 13, pp. 1586
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-022-29189-5
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
Effect of genotyping strategies on the sustained benefit of single-step genomic BLUP over multiple generations
In:
Genetics Selection Evolution, vol. 54
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12711-022-00712-y
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published) -
SNP and Haplotype Regional Heritability Mapping (SNHap-RHM): Joint Mapping of Common and Rare Variation Affecting Complex Traits
In:
Frontiers in genetics, vol. 12
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2021.791712
Research output: Contribution to Journal › Article (Published)
We like to participate in and organise science events in the community.
We routinely visit schools and Scout and Guirlguiding groups and talk about cells and genetics mainly, and get kids excited about science :-)