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
Special Issue: A new generation of anthropological genetics
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
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
Buffalo Evolutionary and Anthropological Genomics Laboratory (BEAGL) 