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Evolutionary Genomics Group
Agenda
Unraveling the evolutionary forces responsible for variations of neutral substitution patterns among taxa or along genomes is a major issue for detecting natural selection within sequences. The genomes of many species (and of individuals within a species) have been sequenced today. This gives us the unprecedented opportunity for a quantitative analysis of this data with respect to evolutionary aspects. Due to advances in next generation sequencing technologies this is possible with more power and precision than before.
We use both comparative genomics and the study of genomic fossils (e.g. retroviral sequences, pseudo genes) to learn more about the processes that shape the human genome and the genomes of other species. We investigate processes on short length scales, e.g. nucleotide substitutions, insertions and deletions and long length scales, e.g. insertions of repetitive elements and duplications. Our analysis is complemented by studies of the mathematical underpinnings of models for nucleotide substitutions and phylogeny as well as experimental approaches to study selection in vitro.
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