My research as molecular biologist lies at the junction of molecular evolution, comparative genomics and epigenetics in the field of gene silencing/activation in metazoans. During my career I have used a broad range of tools and approaches which span familiarity with population genetics, biogeography, gene evolution, comparative genomics and epigenetic regulation. I seek to address the mechanisms that eukaryotic cells can deploy in order to repress foreign genetic invasions, like transposable elements (TEs) or foreign genes acquired by horizontal gene transfer (HTG). To this point my work has focused on he role of epigenetics. Epigenetics can be defined as the study of biological mechanisms that are able to regulate gene expression and function that cannot be explained by changes in DNA sequence. These mechanisms include covalent modification of histones, DNA methylation and non-coding RNAs pathways.