Invité par l’équipe Grange/Geigl, Garrett Hellenthal (UCL Division of Biosciences, London) donnera le 20 décembre un séminaire sur le thème :
Leveraging DNA to infer intermixing among human populations and signatures of adaptation
Research summary
I am currently a Sir Henry Dale Fellow (jointly funded by the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society) working at the UCL Genetics Institute (UGI) on constructing and applying statistical methods to infer human history using genetic data. In particular I often work with genome-wide SNP array data, though my methods are also applicable to sequencing data. I am presently analysing data from multiple ethnic groups across Ethiopia, in collaboration with David Balding, Neil Bradman and Mark Thomas among others, in order to infer mixing events (i.e. « admixture ») among groups and the sociological features that lead to genetic differentiation among ethnicities. I am also applying my algorithms to data from over 50 Native American groups (in collaboration with Andres Ruiz-Linares, among others) in order to assess the impact of various regional empires (e.g. Aztec, Maya) on the genetic structure of populations today, in addition to characterizing the genetic profiles of the original group(s) that crossed the Bering Strait to colonize the Americas.