Luís A. Nunes Amaral

About

Luís A. Nunes Amaral is a professor involved in the Interdisciplinary Biological Sciences Graduate Program at Northwestern University. He holds a PhD from Boston University and conducts research on complex biological and social systems across various disciplines. His lab focuses on understanding systems such as gene regulators networks, metabolic pathways, ecosystems, and the Internet, which are characterized by a large number of components acting according to rules that may change over time and exhibit plastic connectivity and fluid roles. The goal of his research is to develop mechanistic models that provide insight into the emergence, evolution, and stability of complex systems, emphasizing a holistic view of the system rather than focusing solely on individual components. Recent research topics include studying stress response and aging in C. elegans, gene regulation networks in eye development in Drosophila, and evolutionary signatures in codon utilization rates of microbes.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Computer Security
• Medicine
• Political Science
• Law
• Psychology
• Internal medicine
• Pathology
• Virology
• Surgery

Selected publications

• Circuits between infected macrophages and T cells in SARS-CoV-2 pneumonia

  Nature · 2021 · 766 citations

  DOI

• Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance

  Nature Aging · 2022-12-09 · 112 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Aging is among the most important risk factors for morbidity and mortality. To contribute toward a molecular understanding of aging, we analyzed age-resolved transcriptomic data from multiple studies. Here, we show that transcript length alone explains most transcriptional changes observed with aging in mice and humans. We present three lines of evidence supporting the biological importance of the uncovered transcriptome imbalance. First, in vertebrates the length association primarily displays…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The entities enabling scientific fraud at scale are large, resilient, and growing rapidly

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2025-08-04 · 79 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Science is characterized by collaboration and cooperation, but also by uncertainty, competition, and inequality. While there has always been some concern that these pressures may compel some to defect from the scientific research ethos-i.e., fail to make genuine contributions to the production of knowledge or to the training of an expert workforce-the focus has largely been on the actions of lone individuals. Recently, however, reports of coordinated scientific fraud activities have increased. S…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• COVID-19 research risks ignoring important host genes due to pre-established research patterns

  eLife · 2020-11-23 · 34 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  It is known that research into human genes is heavily skewed towards genes that have been widely studied for decades, including many genes that were being studied before the productive phase of the Human Genome Project. This means that the genes most frequently investigated by the research community tend to be only marginally more important to human physiology and disease than a random selection of genes. Based on an analysis of 10,395 research publications about SARS-CoV-2 that mention at least…

  PublisherDOI

• How to build a more open justice system

  Science · 2020 · 22 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Court records are unstructured and costly to access—here's how to fix it

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• SCISIPBIO: A data-science approach to evaluating the likelihood of fraud and error in published studies

  NSF · $350k · 2020–2022

• Administrative Core

  NIH · $43.7M · 2018–2027

• NIH Grant K25GM069546

  NIH · $786k · 2009

Frequent coauthors

• H. Eugene Stanley

  Boston University

  152 shared

• Plamen Ch. Ivanov

  Brigham and Women's Hospital

  107 shared

• Ary L. Goldberger

  Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center

  92 shared

• Ana Minaya‐Bravo

  Instituto Cajal

  75 shared

• Roger Guimerà

  Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats

  72 shared

• Richard Hooper

  Queen Mary University of London

  50 shared

• Dion Morton

  50 shared

• Charles H. Knowles

  Queen Mary University of London

  50 shared

Labs

• Amaral LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Physics

  Boston University

  1996

• Mestrado, Fisica

  Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciencias

  1992

• Licenciatura, Fisica

  Universidade de Lisboa Faculdade de Ciencias

  1990

Similar researchers at Northwestern University

• Brian M. Hoffmanh-112
• Neil L. Kelleherh-110
• William L. Kleinh-82