Time/Place:

Tuesday, February 8, 2011
3:00pm
101 Stanley Thomas Hall
Tulane University (Uptown)

Refreshments will be served

Speaker:

John Novembre, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCLA

Title:

Applications of Human Genetic Diversity to Understanding Human History and Recombination

Abstract:

The rapid advance of genotyping and sequencing technologies is transforming our ability to survey the genetic variation that exists in populations.  As it does so, it raises challenges and opportunities for developing computational methodology to interpret this rich data.  In this talk, I will focus on progress surveying genetic variation in human populations and understanding how human populations are related to one another.  This progress provides new opportunities, such as inferring recombination rates in admixed populations.  It also forces us to revisit long-standing issues, including how statistical methods, such as principal components analysis (PCA), are used in population genetics, and the impact of spatial expansions of populations on genetic variation.