Professor Mario Caccamo

Professor Mario Caccamo was appointed as the Head of Crop Bioinformatics at NIAB in 2015, Managing Director of NIAB EMR in 2017 and NIAB CEO in October 2021.

A computer scientist by training, Mario has over 20 years’ experience in life science research and big data, including specific projects to apply the latest DNA sequencing technologies and bioinformatics methods to advance scientific understanding of crop genetics and the interaction of agricultural crops with their environment.

Mario has led the work on the assembly of the first whole-genome release of the wheat reference sequence and was also one of the founding co-chairs of the expert working group within the Wheat Initiative focused on the deployment of an international Wheat Information System. He continues with his leading role in the cereal bioinformatics communities at both national and international levels.

Research

• Developing pangenomic bioinformatics approaches for cereal crops
• Gene annotation for crop pangenomes

Publications

Key publications:

Mario Caccamo New precision-breeding law unlocks gene editing in England. Nat Biotechnol 41, 752–753 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-023-01795-8
Managing Data in Breeding, Selection and in Practice: A Hundred Year Problem That Requires a Rapid Solution Richard J. Harrison and Mario Caccamo (2022)
Ricardo H Ramirez-Gonzalez, Cristobal Uauy, Mario Caccamo (2015) PolyMarker: A fast polyploid primer design pipeline. Bioinformatics.
KFX Mayer et al. (2014) A chromosome-based draft sequence of the hexaploid bread wheat (Triticum aestivum) genome. Science.
Richard M Leggett, Bernardo J Clavijo, Leah Clissold, Matthew D Clark, Mario Caccamo (2013). NextClip: an analysis and read preparation tool for Nextera long mate pair libraries. Bioinformatics.
Mario Caccamo, Erich Grotewold (2013). Turning over a new leaf in plant genomics. Genome Biology.
Zamin Iqbal, Mario Caccamo, Isaac Turner, Paul Flicek, Gil McVean (2012). De novo assembly and genotyping of variants using colored de Bruijn graphs. Nature Genetic