Career Profile

I am a population geneticist working with a wide range of model systems. I use genomic data from modern and historical organisms with state-of-art computational methods to investigate questions about population histories, local adaptation, selection and allele frequencies through time, among others. You can download my resume/CV here.

Experiences

Research fellow

2021 - Present
University College London, UK

As a research fellow, I have led a global genomic surveillance project focused on the wheat-blast fungus, Magnaporthe oryzae. I have conducted a thorough analysis of genome-wide variables to identify signatures of local adaptation and positive selection in the rice-infecting lineage of the blast fungus. Additionally, my contributions have enabled a deeper understanding of the maintenance of diversity over time in pathogenic lineages of plant-infecting bacteria within the Pseudomonas sp. - Arabidopsis thaliana pathosystem.

PhD Researcher

2016 - 2020
Max Planck Institute for Biology, Germany

During my PhD, I specialized in the application of ancient and historical DNA to reconstruct phylogenomic relationships and infer population history. My research encompassed diverse model systems, including microorganisms such as M. oryzae, plants like A. thaliana, and scarab beetles of the genus Oryctes. By employing genomic methods and computational analyses, I sought to uncover novel insights into the evolutionary processes that shaped the genetic diversity of these organisms.

Selected Publications

Complete list of publications available at my Google Scholar Profile

  • Genomic surveillance uncovers a pandemic clonal lineage of the wheat blast fungus
  • Latorre, S.M., Were, V., Foster, A.J., Langner, T., et al., Win, J., Talbot, N.J., Burbano, H.A., Kamoun, S.
    PLOS Biology, 2022
  • Rapid weed adaptation and range expansion in response to agriculture over the past two centuries
  • Kreiner, J.M., Latorre, S.M., Burbano, H.A., Stinchcombe, J.R., Otto, S.P., Weigel, D., Wright, S.I.
    Science, 2022
  • Isolation, Library Preparation, and Bioinformatic Analysis of Historical and Ancient Plant DNA
  • Latorre, S.M., Lang, P.L.M., Burbano, H.A., Gutaker, R.M.
    Current Protocols in Plant Biology, 2020
  • Differential loss of effector genes in three recently expanded pandemic clonal lineages of the rice blast fungus
  • Latorre, S.M., Reyes-Avila, C.S., Malmgren, A., Win, J., Kamoun, S., Burbano, H.A.
    BMC Biology, 2020

    Skills & Proficiency

    Python (NumPy;Pandas;SciPy)

    R

    Bash

    Nextflow