Anatolian Shepherd

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

Anatolian Shepherd

New Paper – The evolutionary roots of disease susceptibility and complex copy number variation

We just published a paper in Genome Biology and Evolution - "Atopic Dermatitis Susceptibility Variants In Filaggrin Hitchhike Hornerin Selective Sweep". It describes the unusual history of the genetic variation affecting the skin structural protein fillagrin. It turns out that a loss of selective pressure, adaptive restrains on a neighboring gene and a high mutation rate … Continue reading New Paper – The evolutionary roots of disease susceptibility and complex copy number variation

Anatolian Shepherd

Lasker award for our paper in Human Biology

Congratulations to Eaaswar. His paper, "Geographic Distribution And Adaptive Significance Of Genomic Structural Variants: An Anthropological Genetics Perspective" was chosen for the Annual Gabriel W. Lasker Award for the best original scientific article published in the journal, Human Biology. From the editors' words: "The award was created to recognize Professor Lasker's more than 40 years of service … Continue reading Lasker award for our paper in Human Biology

Anatolian Shepherd

New paper: Involves pigs, olfactory receptors and lots of genetic variation

Hoover lab led a study that we contributed that is just published in the Journal Chemical Senses. Allelic variation at 4 loci in the human olfactory receptor gene OR7D4 is associated with perceptual variation in the sex steroid-derived odorants, androstenone, and androstadienone. Androstadienone has been linked with chemosensory identification whereas androstenone makes pork from uncastrated … Continue reading New paper: Involves pigs, olfactory receptors and lots of genetic variation

Anatolian Shepherd

New paper on structural variants and their anthropological relevance

Congratulations to Eaaswar. His paper, "Geographic Distribution And Adaptive Significance Of Genomic Structural Variants: An Anthropological Genetics Perspective" is out as preprint. It is a general review and a example data analysis of existing structural variation datasets within an anthropological context. It also made the cover. 🙂 - We hope that it would be helpful to … Continue reading New paper on structural variants and their anthropological relevance

Anatolian Shepherd

First paper from our lab – Ancient deletions strike again and mysterious ways of adaptive forces

We have our first paper from the Buffalo laboratory published at Molecular Biology and Evolution (link here, it is Open Access). The paper describes polymorphic human deletions that are shared with Neandertals or Denisovans. Most of these deletions are not introgressed from ancient hominins, but rather have been lingering around since before Human/Neandertal/Denisovan ancestor. As expected majority … Continue reading First paper from our lab – Ancient deletions strike again and mysterious ways of adaptive forces