Dr Alejandro Reyes Muñoz
International Fellow at the Sanger Institute and Associate Professor at the Universidad de los Andes
Alejandro’s work uses state-of-the-art techniques to develop computational tools to understand the complex interactions between microorganisms and their environments, including soil, water, plants, animals, and humans.
His research emphasizes the gut virome’s critical role in shaping human health and disease, revealing how viral components – often neglected in conventional microbiome studies – play key roles in modulating bacterial populations, influencing host immunity, and driving ecosystem stability. His group has developed computational frameworks to analyze uncultured viral genomes, enabling deeper exploration of the “viral dark matter” present in environmental and host-associated metagenomes
Collaborative projects
As an International Fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Alejandro is leading Latinbiota, a continental initiative to characterize the gut microbiome of healthy populations from urban, rural and native origins in Latin American countries. This project aims to establish reference datasets for microbial diversity in underrepresented regions, contributing to a better understanding of the human gut microbiome’s role in health, nutrition, and disease.
Additionally, Alejandro has been actively involved in global capacity-building projects, such as the CABANA Project, a UK-led initiative that enhances bioinformatics capabilities across Latin America. Through this collaboration, Alejandro has developed and delivered hands-on workshops, established remote training modules, and facilitated knowledge transfer between researchers in high-income countries and low- middle-income regions.
He also co-leads research initiatives focused on virome ecology and microbial interactions in agricultural settings, including projects analyzing viral diversity in shrimp farms and bovine rumen microbiomes. His efforts to foster cross-disciplinary and international collaborations have significantly strengthened the research infrastructure and expertise in Latin America.
Personal Bio
In 2004, Alejandro earned a B.Sc. (Hons) in Microbiology from the Universidad de los Andes, Colombia, before completing an M.Sc. in Biological Sciences (with a focus on Microbiology) from the same institution in 2005. He was awarded the prestigious Fulbright Science and Technology Award and completed his Ph.D. in Computational and Systems Biology at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, under the supervision of Professor Jeffrey I. Gordon, a pioneer in microbiome research. His doctoral thesis on the human gut virome laid the foundation for his future work in viral metagenomics.
He is currently an Associate Professor and Undergraduate Coordinator in the Department of Biological Sciences at Universidad de los Andes, Colombia. Alejandro also served as Group Leader of the Max Planck Tandem Group in Computational Biology between 2016 and 2023, a prestigious initiative to build computational biology research capacity in Colombia through international collaboration with the Max Planck Institute in Germany. He currently holds the title of Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Pathology and Immunology at Washington University School of Medicine.
Additionally, he is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Committee for the Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) and serves on the Scientific Advisory Board for the Center for Gut Microbiome Research & Education of the American Gastroenterology Association (AGA).