Title: CS 201 John Postel Distinguished Lecture: 100 Million Years of Evolutionary History of the Human Genome, DAVID HAUSSLER, UC Santa Cruz
Date: Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Time: 4:15 p.m. - 5:45 p.m.
Location: 3400 Boelter Hall
Hosted by Eleazar Eskin
Abstract:
Comparing the genomes of present-day species allows us to computationally reconstruct what most of the DNA bases in the genome of the common ancestor of placental mammals must have looked like approximately 100 million years ago. We can then deduce the genetic changes on the evolutionary path from that ancient species to humans. In so doing, we discover how Darwinian evolution has shaped us at the molecular level. About five percent of the human genome consists of conserved elements that have remained surprisingly unchanged across millions of years of evolution, suggesting important function. Only one third of these code for protein; the rest are likely to be gene regulatory elements and non-coding RNAs. Among these we occasionally see short segments that have undergone unusually rapid change in one species, such as a gene linked to brain development that has changed dramatically only in humans since we split from our common ancestor with chimpanzees. It will be many years before the biology of such examples is fully understood, but right now we relish the opportunity to get a first peek at the molecular tinkering that transformed our animal ancestors into humans.
Bio:
David Haussler’s research lies at the interface of mathematics, computer science, and molecular biology. He develops new statistical and algorithmic methods to explore the molecular evolution of the human genome, integrating cross-species comparative and high-throughput genomics data to study gene structure, function, and regulation. His recent research sheds light on the possible functionality of what was once considered to be “junk” DNA, and his lab has identified and explored the function of genomic elements that have remained conserved for millions of years and then undergone rapid evolution in newer species. He has also begun to computationally reconstruct the genome of the ancestor common to placental mammals.
As a collaborator on the international Human Genome Project, his team posted the first publicly available computational assembly of the human genome sequence on the internet—the precursor to the UCSC Genome Browser (http://genome.ucsc.edu), a web-based tool that is used extensively in biomedical research.
Haussler received his PhD in computer science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of AAAS and AAAI. He has won a number of awards, including the 2008 Senior Scientist Accomplishment Award from the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB), the 2006 Dickson Prize for Science from Carnegie Mellon University, and the 2003 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award.
Entries (RSS)