On March 19, 2024, researchers from ITER´s Genomics Area gave several scientific outreach talks at IES Granadilla as part of the Cultural Week organized by the aforementioned educational centre.
These talks were promoted by the Biology department and targeted middle and high school students. The informative talks were conducted by the researcher and coordinator of the Genomics Area at the Technological Institute of Renewable Energies, José M. Lorenzo-Salazar, who is also a Technology teacher.
Approximately 75 students had the opportunity to interact with Professor Lorenzo-Salazar, who presented recent results on research carried out by the Genomics Area of ITER to ascertain the origin of the indigenous population that inhabited the archipelago before the conquest that took place during the 15th century.
Recent work conducted by ITER´s Genomics Area, a scientific and technological centre under the jurisdiction of the Honourable Insular Council of Tenerife, based on the genome of the contemporary population of the Canary Islands, has allowed for a detailed elucidation of the European origin of the individuals who participated in the conquest of the Canary Islands. During the talks, both students and teachers first-hand learned about the methods used in the Genomics Laboratory of ITER to study the genetic material known as mitochondrial DNA (which is inherited matrilineally) and which is massively sequenced on nucleic acid sequencing platforms and analysed thanks to the TeideHPC supercomputer, one of the most important supercomputing infrastructures in the country.
During the talks, the audience was also briefly shown some other applications developed in the Genomics Area. Among them, its participation in the Epidemiological Surveillance Network based on COVID-19 sequencing in the Canary Islands stands out, as part of the national surveillance network RELECOV, and its recent extension to the surveillance of other viruses of interest such as the influenza virus and the respiratory syncytial virus.
The original work related to the study of mitochondrial DNA can be found online under the title “Digging into the admixture strata of current-day Canary Islanders based on mitogenomes” (source: https://www.cell.com/iscience/fulltext/S2589-0042(22)02180-0).
More information can be found on the educational centre’s website: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/DxPd3MVYVtH7wpf3