Dr. Victor Chano

Current Project

I am currently involved in the project “TreeGeneClimate – Sustainable wood and biomass production: Novel property traits, resilience to climate change, pest and diseases”. This project aims to interrogate the genetic basis of wood traits of one of the most economically important forest trees, Norway spruce (Picea abies [L.] H. Karst) through the combination of genetic and phenotypic studies, and the analysis of genome-wide markers associated to physical and chemical properties, and resistance to decay and pests. More specifically, my research will focus on the use of Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) for the identification of genes associated to basic wood properties such as growth, decay resistance, pest and disease tolerance, and climate change adaptation. Furthermore, these results will allow us to examine the feasibility of genomic selection (GS) for the prediction of wood traits and the development of new tree breeding programs.

Work experience

• Since September 2020: Postdoc at Forest Genetics and Forest Tree Breeding Department, Georg-August University Göttingen
• 2018-2019: Postdoctoral Researcher at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain.
• 2017-2018: Project Manager at Instituto de Recursos Naturales y Agrobiología de Sevilla (IRNAS, CSIC), Spain
• 2014-2015: Research Assistant at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain
• 2010-2014: FPI Fellowship Program at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM), Spain



Education

• PhD in Forestry Research at Technic University of Madrid (May 2018)
Dissertation: “Xylogenesis in response to severe traumatism in the Canary Island pine (Pinus canariensis C. Sm. ex DC)”.
• MSc. Bioinformatics & Biostatistics at Open University of Catalonia (January 2019)
• Master of Arts in Teaching – Specialty in Biology and Geology – at Universidad de Granada (September 2009)
• MSc. in Biotechnology at University of Granada (February 2010)
• Bachelor Science in Biology at University of Extremadura (July 2008)


Research interest

• Forest Genetics and Genomics
• Transcriptomics and gene expression analysis
• Development in forest tree species
• Forest pathology and host-pathogen interactions


Publications

• Victor Chano, Juan Sobrino-Plata, Carmen Collada, Alvaro Soto. Wood development regulators involved in apical growth in Pinus canariensis. Plant Biology 2021; 23(3): 438-444, DOI: 10.1111/plb.13228
• Víctor Chano, Tania Domínguez-Flores, María Dolores Hidalgo-Gálvez, Jesús Rodríguez-Calcerrada, Ignacio Manuel Pérez-Ramos. Epigenetic responses of hare barley (Hordeum murinum subsp. leporinum) to climate change: an experimental, trait-based approach. Heredity 2021; 126: 748.762, DOI: 10.1038/s41437-021-00415-y
• Fernando Mora-Márquez, Víctor Chano, José Luís Vázquez-Poletti, Unai López de Heredia. TOA: a software package for automated functional annotation in non-model plant species. Molecular Ecology Resources 2020. DOI: 10.1111/1755-0998.13285.
• Fernando Mora-Márquez, José Luis Vázquez-Poletti, Víctor Chano, Carmen Collada, Álvaro Soto and Unai López de Heredia. Hardware performance evaluation of de novo transcriptome assembly software in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud. Current Bioinformatics 2019, 15. DOI: 10.2174/1574893615666191219095817
• Victor Chano, Carmen Collada, Alvaro Soto. Transcriptomic analysis of wound xylem formation in Pinus canariensis. BMC Plant Biology 2017; 17(234), DOI: 10.1186/s12870-017-1183-3
• Victor Chano, Unai Lopez de Heredia, Carmen Collada, Alvaro Soto. Transcriptomic analysis of juvenile Wood formation during the growing season in Pinus canariensis. Holzforschung 2017; 71(12): 919-937, DOI: 10.1515/hf-2017-0014
• Victor Chano, Rosana Lopez, Pilar Pita, Carmen Collada, Alvaro Soto. Proliferation of axial parenchymatic xylem cells is a key step in wound closure of girdled stems in Pinus canariensis. BMC Plant Biology 2015; 15(1), DOI:10.1186/s12870-015-0447-z