Alexandre Afranio Peixoto (1963-2013)

Abstract

Alexandre Afranio Peixoto, a leading Researcher at Instituto Oswaldo Cruz, died tragically in a rafting accident on February 10, 2013 in Mar d'Espanha, Minas Gerais. He is survived by his wife Valéria and two sons: Daniel (22) and Pedro (17). Alexandre carried out his undergraduate studies at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, during which time he analyzed the chromosome inversion polymorphism of Drosophila mediopunctata in the laboratory of Louis B. Klaczko; work he continued during his Master's degree in the same Institution. He then went to Great Britain to obtain his PhD at the University of Leicester supervised by Charalambos P. Kyriacou studying the molecular evolution of the period gene, which controls the biological clock in Drosophila. Finally, he did his post-doctoral work at Jeffrey C. Hall'