Clément Goubert
Clément is an evolutionary biologist who became a bioinformatician through his (strange) passion for transposable elements. He completed his PhD at the University of Lyon (France), studying TEs in mosquitoes, before crossing the Atlantic to study transposon biology in the lab of Cédric Feschotte (University of Utah, then Cornell University). He later worked with Guillaume Bourque (McGill University, Canada) on developing bioinformatic methods to analyze TEs.
In the Wheeler lab, Clément works on the development of bioinformatic methods for TE analysis and contributes to the DFAM database of TE families, particularly in approaches related to the detection, annotation, and classification of repeat families. Clément also contributes to the TE Hub effort, an international consortium dedicated to facilitating access to and training in bioinformatic analyses of transposable elements.
When not working on TEs, his research also involves exploring the biology associated with computational predictions from our software, in particular exon mapping and the evolution of splicing.
Outside the lab, you can find Clément at Home Depot or in a record store. He also enjoys gardening, photography, pushing buttons on synthesizers, and camping, but he particularly excels at relaxing with his zoo of pets. There’s also a guitar on the wall that he hasn’t touched in a while, and a not-so-secret music project: 2French.
Contact
Find me on campus: Drachman Hall B, room B207B (second floor)
Consortium memberships
Frequent collaborators
- Arian Smit, Robert Hubley (ISB Seattle, WA, USA)
- Cristian Groza (Montreal Heart Institute, Canada)
- Guillaume Bourque (McGill University, Canada)
- Hongxu Ding (Univeristy of Arizona)
- Rita Rebollo (INRAe/INSA Lyon, France)
- Johann Confais (INRAe/URGi Versailles, France)
Software
You can find Clément’s tools on his GitHub
Selected Publications
- 2025 | Chen X. Zhang Z., Yan Y. , Goubert C., Bourque G., Inoue F. “A phylogenetic approach uncovers cryptic endogenous retrovirus subfamilies in the primate lineage.” Science Advances.
- 2024 | Groza C., Chen X., Wheeler T.J., Bourque G., and Goubert C. “A Unified Framework to Analyze Transposable Element Insertion Polymorphisms Using Graph Genomes.” Nature Communication.
- 2023 | Goubert, Clément. “Assembly-Free Detection and Quantification of Transposable Elements with dnaPipeTE.” Methods in Molecular Biology.
- 2022 | Goubert, Clement, Rory J. Craig, Agustin F. Bilat, Valentina Peona, Aaron A. Vogan, and Anna V. Protasio. “A Beginner’s Guide to Manual Curation of Transposable Elements.” Mobile DNA.
- 2020 | Flynn, Jullien M., Robert Hubley, Clément Goubert, Jeb Rosen, Andrew G. Clark, Cédric Feschotte, and Arian F. Smit. “RepeatModeler2 for Automated Genomic Discovery of Transposable Element Families.” P.N.A.S.
- 2020 | Goubert, Clément, Nicolas Arce Zevallos, and Cédric Feschotte. “Contribution of Unfixed Transposable Element Insertions to Human Regulatory Variation.” Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc.
Please let me know if you need access to these papers, I’ll be happy to share the manuscripts
Clément and Pistache, a great specimen of random X-inactivation