Laura Botigué leads the group of Genomics for Ancient Crops and Domestication at the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (Barcelona, Spain). She studies genome evolution in crops to understand the changes that wild species underwent as they adapted to agriculture. To do this, she applies population genetics theory and bioinformatics to analyse the genetic variability of crop wild relatives, ancient DNA, traditional landraces, and modern varieties. Her current work focuses mainly on crops that originated in the Fertile Crescent, particularly wheat and flax.
Laura Botigué obtained her PhD in 2012 from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, where she studied the history of human populations in North Africa under the supervision of Prof. David Comas. Her work characterised the genetic architecture of North African populations, their origins, and their migrations with neighbouring regions, and was published in Botigué, Henn et al. (2013) in PNAS and Henn, Botigué et al. (2012) in PLoS Genetics. She then moved to Stony Brook University with Prof. Brenna Henn under a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Catalan Government to continue her research on human populations, and additionally began a research line on dog ancient DNA with Prof. Krishna Veeramah (Botigué et al. 2017, Nature Communications).
Towards the end of her postdoctoral work, she decided to continue her research on ancient DNA with a focus on plants and domestication. In 2017, she began a collaboration with researchers from University College London on ancient wheat (Scott, Botigué et al. 2019, Nature Plants) and joined the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (UK) as a Bioinformatician (Zuntini et al. 2024, Nature). One year later, she joined the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics as a Junior Group Leader, and in 2020 obtained the prestigious Ramón y Cajal Fellowship to consolidate her research group on ancient crops and domestication. She was awarded tenure in 2024 as a CSIC Scientist.
