Section

Meta-OMICS

In the Meta-OMICS group, we use high-throughput sequencing approaches to study the diversity and evolution of a variety of animal taxa, with a particular interest in aquatic and semi-aquatic groups. Extreme environments such as the polar regions, and deep sea/subterranean habitats present excellent grounds for the study of eco-evolutionary interactions and mechanisms of environmental adaptation.

Our work includes development of methodologies for environmental monitoring and the study of genomic adaptation environmental change. Such approached include protocol development and novel applications of eDNA metabarcoding, metagenomics, and reference genome sequencing and comparative genomics analysis. Furthermore, we use bioinformatics for analysis of large datasets and establishment of pipelines for HTS data processing.

The Meta-OMICS group is part of the Terrestrial Zoology Department at Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, and is based in the Reimersbau building (6th floor), Senckenberganlage 25, 60325, Frankfurt am Main.

For more information see also page.

Research

Publications

Selected publications – For a full list of publications see Google Scholar page

Bista I.*, Lino, A. (2026). Long-read sequencing for biodiversity analyses – a comprehensive guide. Methods in Ecology & Evolution, 17, 650–667. https://doi. org/10.1111/2041-210x.70250. (*Corresponding author).

Martelossi, J., Krasheninnikova, K., Denton, A., Wood, J.M.D., Mathers, T., Durbin, R., Fong, N., Bentley, D. L., Clark, M.S., Bista, I.* (2026). A new phased assembly of the Antarctic spiny plunderfish provides novel insights into the evolution of the notothenioid radiation. BioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.21.719633 (*Corresponding author).

Formenti et al. The Vertebrate Genomes Project Phase I: A global reference genome resource. BioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.06.24.732306

Lehmitz, R., Hohberg, K., Husemann, M., Peters, R.S., Scheunemann, N., Bálint, M., Balke, M., Bieberich, J., Bista, I., Borsch, T., Bourlat, S.J., Bussmann, R.W., Damm, U., Dey, L.S., Flocco, C.G., Grossart, H.P., Haase, P., Höfer, H., …., Tockner, K. (2025). Unknown Germany – An integrative biodiversity discovery program, npj biodiversity, 4, 41 (2025).

Bista, I.*, Wood, J. M. D., Desvignes, T., McCarthy, S. A., Matschiner, M., Ning Z., Tracey A., Torrance J., Sims Y., Chow W., Smith M., Oliver K., Haggerty L., Salzburger W., Postlethwait J.H., Howe K., Clark M.S., Detrich III H.W., Cheng C.H.C., Miska E.A., Durbin R.*, (2023). Genomics of cold adaptations in the Antarctic notothenioid fish radiation, Nature Communications, 14, 3412. (*Corresponding author).

Formenti G., Theissinger K., Fernandes C., Bista I., Bombarely A., Bleidorn C., Ciofi C., Crottini A, Godoy J.A., Höglund J., Malukiewicz J., Mouton A., Oomen R. A., Paez S., Palsbøll P. J, Pampoulie C., Ruiz-López M.J, Svardal H., Theofanopoulou C., deVries J., Waldvogel A.M., Zhang G., Mazzoni C.J., Jarvis E.D., Bálint M., and The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) Consortium. (2022). The era of reference genomes in conservation genomics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 37(3), 197–202.

Dahn H. A., Mountcastle J., Balacco J., Winkler S., Bista I., Schmitt A. D., Vinnere-Pettersson O., Formenti G., Oliver K., Smith M., Tan W., Kraus A., Mac S., Komoroske L. M., Lama T., Crawford A. J., Murphy R. W., Brown S., Scott A. F., Morin P. A, Jarvis A. D., Fedrigo O. (2022). Benchmarking ultra-high molecular weight DNA preservation protocols for long-read and long-range sequencing. GigaScience, Vol. 11, (2022), giac068.

Rhie A., McCarthy S. A., Fedrigo O., Damas J., Formenti G., Koren, S., Uliano-Silva M., Chow W., Fungtammasan A., Kim J., Lee C., Ko B. J., Chaisson M., Gedman G. L., Cantin L. J., Thibaud-Nissen F., Haggerty L., Bista I., Smith M., … Jarvis E. D. (2021). Towards complete and error-free genome assemblies of all vertebrate species. Nature, 592(7856), 737–746.

Bista I.*, Carvalho G. R., Tang M., Walsh K., Zhou X., Hajibabaei M., Shokralla S., Seymour M., Bradley D., Liu S., Christmas M., Creer S.* (2018). Performance of amplicon and shotgun sequencing for accurate biomass estimation in invertebrate community samples. Molecular Ecology Resources, 1–15 (*Corresponding author).

Bista I. *, Carvalho G.R., Walsh K., Seymour M., Hajibabaei M., Lallias D., Christmas M., Creer S.* (2017). Annual time-series analysis of aqueous eDNA reveals ecologically relevant dynamics of lake ecosystem biodiversity. Nature Communications, 8, 14087 (*Corresponding author).