We have reported a computational method to detect the haplotypes harboring polymorphic gene duplications in the human genome variation dataset. This study is now published in Genome Biology and Evolution. The maestro (is it maestra?), herself drew an amazing image to accompany the piece (hopefully the next cover of the journal?). Polymorphic duplications can be … Continue reading New Paper: A new method to investigate the haplotype context of duplicated genes
New paper: Independent amylase gene duplications
Stefan (Ruhl) and I recently published a comprehensive survey of the amylase gene copy number and salivary enzyme activity among mammalian species eLife. Petar (Pajic) was the driving force for the sample collection and analysis. Briefly, we found that 1. Amylase copy number evolves extremely fast leading to independent (I daresay convergent) bursts among mammals … Continue reading New paper: Independent amylase gene duplications
New paper: Hotspots of structural variation
Onta (Yen Lung Lin) led the charge in this careful characterization of regions in the genome where that lead to the recurrent formation of structural variation. The paper "Fine-scale characterization of genomic structural variation in the human genome reveals adaptive and biomedically relevant hotspots" is now published in GBE. This paper has given us some … Continue reading New paper: Hotspots of structural variation
New Paper: An incomplete sweep of a metabolizing gene
A whole gene deletion sounds awful! You lose one entire gene and hence the protein that this gene is coding. However, there exist several gene deletions which have been maintained polymorphically among human populations. In our previous work, we found that a cellular detoxification gene, the GSTM1, to remain polymorphically deleted in both humans and … Continue reading New Paper: An incomplete sweep of a metabolizing gene
New paper: Evolutionary biology of cellular aging (We got the cover)
An evolutionary transcriptomics approach links CD36 to membrane remodeling in replicative senescence Press release by Charlotte Hsu Academic minute podcast by our collaborator Ekin Atilla The evolution of cellular senescence is a remarkable question. It connects to development, organismal life-span, protection against cancer, and its rate seems to vary between species. Moreover, since life-span of … Continue reading New paper: Evolutionary biology of cellular aging (We got the cover)
New paper: A look at the works of 2017
The editors of American Anthropologist kindly invited me to write a review article to highlight (and dare I say integrate) the discoveries in anthropological genetics in 2017. It was a gratifying project as it allowed me to read the exciting (and intimidating) breadth of our discipline. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight … Continue reading New paper: A look at the works of 2017
New paper: Structural variants are awesome – And they affect detoxification genes
Our lab has been excited by genomic structural variation because we believe that they underlie a considerable and underappreciated part of the phenotypic variation in primates. It is just that they are challenging to study and come up with straightforward evolutionary stories. Most of the time, what we find is much more complicated than we … Continue reading New paper: Structural variants are awesome – And they affect detoxification genes
