Javier Robalino
Research Instructor
Education
PhD, Marine Biomedicine and Environmental Sciences Center, Medicial University of South Carolina, 2006
Email
javier.robalino@stonybrook.edu
Downloads
curriculum vitae
Dr. Javier Robalino is a comparative immunologist interested in the evolution of antimicrobial and antiviral defense in a large group of arthropods known as Pancrustacea (which includes all insects and crustaceans). One aspect of his research is the use of transcriptomics and experimental molecular genetics to identify mechanisms of antiviral immunity in model species within this clade, such as marine shrimp and fruit flies. By comparing the antiviral responses of very different model species, he is hoping to gain insight into immune mechanisms that have been conserved across Pancrustacea. This type of research is key to better understanding how infectious diseases affect crustaceans and insects of ecological, commercial, and medical significance (e.g., farmed crustaceans and disease-transmitting insects).
A second aspect of his research involves the incorporation of immune phenotypes and immune gene sequences into phylogenetic analyses aimed at reconstructing the evolutionary history of crustacean groups, especially marine shrimps of the group Penaeoidea. By integrating immunological data with other traditional sources of data used in phylogenetics (such as morphology and DNA sequences) he hopes to gain insight into the types of adaptations and evolutionary forces that influence the evolution of immune defense.
His work at Stony Brook is currently part of the Next Generation Phenomics for the Tree of Life project supported by the NSF Assembling, Visualizing and Analyzing the Tree of Life program. Integral to this research is developing new tools to facilitate the collection of phenomic data by using crowdsourcing to allow non-experts to score phenomic data for tree-building.
