I am pleased to announce that the online version of the Special Issue in Human Biology which I edited has now come out. It represents, in my opinion, the best examples of the new and exciting work in our field, anthropological genetics. The articles explore an ocean of exciting new questions about human uniqueness and … Continue reading Special Issue: A new generation of anthropological genetics
New paper: Neanderthals in Western Asia
Ozgur, after a pretty painful year of hard work, has now compiled a very nice set of derived Neanderthal haplotypes that were introgressed in Western Asia. It is a very nice extension of the excellent work, showing the local impact of introgression. Here is the link for our paper in Genome Biology and Evolution - … Continue reading New paper: Neanderthals in Western Asia
New Paper: VCF2TREE – A phylogenetic tool
Erica (Duo Xu) has spearheaded an effort to compile all the small, different methods that we developed for analyzing population genomics data to construct locus-specific phylogenies into a streamlined pipeline. Yousef Jaber, a bright undergrad from our computer science department, end up making a nice GUI for this pipeline. We hope that it would be … Continue reading New Paper: VCF2TREE – A phylogenetic tool
New paper: Of archaic admixture in Africa, cherries, and serendipity
We have a new paper -two years in the making - where we showed evidence for introgression from an African archaic hominin to the ancestors of modern humans. This is a relatively big and, I have to admit, a serendipitous finding, corroborating the emerging notion that an "interbreeding bonanza" has shaped our ancestors. I do … Continue reading New paper: Of archaic admixture in Africa, cherries, and serendipity
Marie is in the news
Our very won Marie was featured in UBNow - Hope that this would be the first of many great stories.
A note on evolution and disease
I wanted to write this post to discuss an interesting discussion going on with regards to evolutionary basis of human complex diseases. It stems from our paper that looked into the evolution of skin barrier related gene, called fillagrin (FLG). FLG stood out for four conceivable reasons. See this review for more. (i) It is huge. … Continue reading A note on evolution and disease
New paper: Of light, duplications and UV protection
We have helped Cemali Bekpen and the Max Planck Evolutionary Biology Group of Dr. Tautz in resolving a very complicated and variable gene duplication. Even though, some of the trends remain fuzzy, it is now clear that gene duplications of SPATA31 diversified in humans and remain variable. What is more, some of their function has to do … Continue reading New paper: Of light, duplications and UV protection
