Pedro Antonio Moreno Tovar

Biography

Biographical Summary
Pedro worked in molecular biology, researching genes and antigenic proteins of M. tuberculosis and M. leprae with diagnostic and immunogenic potential. Subsequently, he gained experience in the study of breast cancer*, human genetics, and fractal geometry. Later, he transitioned to the emerging fields of genomics and bioinformatics. He collaborated in formulating a scalar theory that explains the population repertoires of cells in the humoral immune response (Burgos and Moreno-Tovar, 1996) and was a pioneer in applying multifractal analysis to the study of DNA sequences arranged in the chaos game representation (Gutiérrez et al., 1998). Additionally, Pedro served as coordinator for the Dpto. of Valle del Cauca of the GeBiX Project of Excellence from 2008 to 2014, focusing on the analysis of metagenomes of extreme environments. Subsequently, between 2015 and 2020, he coordinated the SGR of Valle del Cauca project on breast cancer.

*Note: Pedro's collaboration on breast cancer was part of Patricia E. Vélez's Summa Cum Laude master's thesis in genetics, which validated the use of tamoxifen for breast cancer patients in Colombia. Since then, thousands of women in the country have benefited from this research.

Research Interests
Pedro is currently working on identifying biological problems that can be addressed with computer tools, mainly using databases, mathematics, geometry and statistics to study the structural and functional organization of genes, genomes and omics profiles. His main interests are: developing algorithms and applications (software) aimed at answering questions that account for the emergent properties that characterize life. From a human health point of view, there is a special focus on the study of breast cancer and work related to the use of breast implants and their consequences.