[3] Subsequent work has involved the application of molecular genetics to symbiosis and marine biology research (e.g. corals and sponges).

Lopez applied his molecular evolutionary training in postdoctoral appointments with Nancy Knowlton, characterizing the Orbicella (formerly Montastraea) annularis coral sibling species complex at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, and marine sponge genetics with Shirley Pomponi at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute in Ft.

[citation needed] The latter allowed him to use Johnson Sea-Link submersible technology to investigate deep-sea sponges and corals.

Lopez was part of the Deep Pelagic Nekton Dynamics (DEEPEND) Consortium of the Gulf of Mexico, led by marine biologist Tracey T. Sutton, to better understand food webs and pelagic microbial distributions in the deep Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

[10] After some initial consultations with geneticist Stephen J. O'Brien and seeing the success of the first whole taxa-driven genome sequencing project, Genome10K, Lopez, and collaborators moved to form GIGA in 2013.

[15] Lopez applied the culture-independent molecular tools that arose from the Woeseian revolution of ribosomal RNA-based bacterial systematics.