
Professor
Distinguished Postdoc Mentor Award, 2019
Department of Biological Sciences
College of Arts and Sciences
Contact Information
H532 Hochstetter Hall, Buffalo NY, 14260, Phone: (716) 645-4937, omergokc@buffalo.edu
Education
- Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
- Postdoctoral Research, Harvard Medical School
Research Statement
Omer Gokcumen is an expert in evolutionary anthropology — the study of how humans evolved and how they differ from non-human primates such as gorillas and chimpanzees. His work is tied to human evolution, including evolutionary adaptation and the evolutionary processes that lead to genetic disease. Gokcumen’s research examines the role that genomic variants, especially deletions and duplications, play in human disease and biology. His laboratory investigates the evolutionary history of genetic variations tied to interesting traits and diseases in modern and ancient human populations. Here is his CV.
Selected Publications
- A Aqil, L Speidel, P Pavlidis, O Gokcumen (2023). Balancing selection on genomic deletion polymorphisms in humans. Elife. 12, e79111.
- Nikkanen, J., Leong, W.A., Krause, W.C., Dermadi, D., Maschek, J.A., Van Ry, T., Cox, J.E., Weiss, E.J., Gokcumen, O.*, Chawla, A., Ingraham, H.A. (2022). An evolutionary trade-off between host immunity and metabolism drives fatty liver in male mice. Science. 378: 290-295.
- Pajic, P.*, Shen, S., Qu, J., May, A.J., Knox, S., Ruhl, S., Gokcumen, O.* (2022) A mechanism of gene evolution generating mucin function. Science Advances. 8: 34. [Corresponding author].
- Saitou, M.*, Masuda, N., Gokcumen, O.* (2022). Similarity-based analysis of allele frequency distribution among multiple populations identifies adaptive genomic structural variants. Molecular Biology and Evolution. 39: msab313. [Corresponding Author].
- Saitou, M.*, Resendez, S.*, Pradhan, A.J., Wu, F., Lie, N.C., Hall, N.J., Zhu, Q., Reinholdt, L. Satta, Y., Speidel, L., Nakagome, S., Hanchard, N. A., Churchill, G., Lee, C., Atilla-Gokcumen, G. E., Mu, X., Gokcumen, O.* (2021). Sex-specific phenotypic effects and evolutionary history of an ancient polymorphic deletion of the human growth hormone receptor. Sci Adv. 7, eabi4476. [Corresponding Author].
- Gokcumen, O. (2020) Archaic hominin introgression into modern human genomes. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology. 171: 60.
- Saitou, M.* & Gokcumen, O. (2020). An Evolutionary Perspective on the Impact of Genomic Copy Number Variation on Human Health. Journal of Molecular Evolution. 88: 104.
- Saitou, M*., Gaylord, E., Xu, D.,Neznanova, L., Nathan, S., Grawe, A., Chang, J., Ryan, William., Ruhl, S., Knox, S.M., and Gokcumen, O*. (2020). Functional Specialization of Human Salivary Glands and Origins of Proteins Intrinsic to Human Saliva. Cell Reports. 33, 108402. [Corresponding Author].