Dr Elia Benito-Gutiérrez
- Visiting Researcher
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About
Elia Benito Gutierrez is a biologist by training. She completed her PhD at the University of Barcelona on the evolutionary origins of the neurotrophic system using amphioxus as a model system. She made a field-changing discovery by demonstrating that the neurotrophic system, previously thought to be a prerequisite for the evolution of a complex brain in vertebrates, predates the origin of vertebrates themselves. She received several prizes for this discovery and subsequently moved to EMBL, where she continued developing amphioxus as a laboratory-based model system. At EMBL, she developed an automated culturing system for cephalochordates, validated using species collected from around the world. She has participated in two cephalochordate genome projects and is currently working on those of rare cephalochordate species.
Building on these resources, as a Group Leader at the University of Cambridge and also now as a Senior Principal Scientist at Genentech, her lab is actively developing new techniques in amphioxus and in human brain tissue that enable the profiling, quantification, and modelling of gene expression in situ during development and disease at single-cell resolution, with the aim of identifying morphological novelties before they are anatomically apparent and predicting disease before it reaches an advanced stage.
Research
Our research focuses on uncovering the evolutionary origins of complex traits in the vertebrate head, including the elaborated ventricular brain, neural crest and placodal derivatives, and craniofacial structures. Because these features are absent outside vertebrates, they are considered key innovations associated with the invertebrate-to-vertebrate transition.
Our goal is to identify the molecular changes that drove the emergence of these morphological innovations, which likely enabled the diversification and success of vertebrates. To address this, we use amphioxus (a cephalochordate) as a model system, as it is widely regarded as the closest living proxy to the ancestral chordate.
In parallel, we apply a similar framework to human biology, investigating the molecular changes that give rise to early pathological features of neurodegenerative processes. This work aims to identify strategies to prevent or reverse neuronal loss before disease progression becomes irreversible
Key publications
- Gattoni G, Keitley D, Sawle A, Benito-Gutiérrez E (2025). An ancient apical patterning system sets the position of the forebrain in chordates. Science Advances. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adq4731
- Ton MN, Keitley D, Theeuwes B, Guibentif C, Ahnfelt-Rønne J, Andreassen TK, Calero-Nieto FJ, Imaz-Rosshandler I, Pijuan-Sala B, Nichols J, Benito-Gutiérrez È, Marioni JC, Göttgens B. (2023). An atlas of rabbit development as a model for single-cell comparative genomics. Nat Cell Biol. doi: 10.1038/s41556-023-01174-0.
-Gattoni G, Andrews TGR, Benito-Gutiérrez E (2022). Restricted proliferation during neurogenesis contributes to regionalization of the amphioxus nervous system. Front Neurosci. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2022.812223.
- Andrews TGR, Pönisch W, Paluch E, Steventon BJ, Benito-Gutierrez E. (2021). Single-cell morphometrics reveals ancestral principles of notochord development. Development. doi: 10.1242/dev.199430.
- Benito-Gutiérrez E, Gattoni G, Stemmer M, Rohr SD, Schumacher LN, Tang J, Marconi A, Jekely G, Arendt D. (2021) The dorsoanterior brain of adult amphioxus shares similarities in expression profile and neuronal composition with the vertebrate telencephalon. BMC Biology. May 21;19(1):110. doi: 10.1186/s12915-021-01045-w.
- Andrews TGR, Gattoni G, Busby L, Schwimmer MA, Benito-Gutierrez E. (2020) Hybridisation chain reaction for quantitative and multiplex imaging of gene expression in amphioxus embryos and adult tissues. Methods Mol Biol. 2020;2148:179-194. doi: 10.1007/978-1-0716-0623-0_11.
- Zawisza-Álvarez M, Pérez-Calles C, Gattoni G, Garcia-Fernàndez J, Benito-Gutiérrez È, Herrera-Úbeda C. (2020) The ADAR Family in Amphioxus: RNA Editing and Conserved Orthologous Site Predictions. Genes Nov 30;11(12):1440. doi: 10.3390/genes11121440.
- Marletaz F, Firbas P, Maeso I, Tena JJ, Bogdanovic O, Perry M, Wyatt CDR, Calle-Mustienes E, Bertrand E, Burguera D, Heeringen S, Jimenez-Gancedo S, Aldea D, Marquez Y, Buono L, Kozmikova I, Louis A, Permanyer J, Acemel RD, Albuixech-Crespo B, Le Petillon Y, Florian AL, Subirana L, Farahani E, Albalat R, Aury JM, Benito-Gutierrez E, et al. (2018) Amphioxus functional genomics and the evolution of vertebrate regulatory traits. Nature Dec;564(7734):64-70. doi: 10.1038/s41586-018-0734-6.
Full list of publications: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=gYtk-tMAAAAJ&hl=en