Variation among individuals and species reflects the combined effects of mutation, recombination, population history and natural selection. As a result, studies of natural variation can provide important insights into evolutionary and genetic mechanisms: as examples, DNA sequence conservation among distantly related species can help identify functional roles too subtle to be detected in lab settings, while analyses of population variation allow one to study events that are too infrequent. Our research pursues a population genetic approach to investigate the causes and consequences of variation in recombination and the dynamics of adaptation. Research in my group is mostly computational, combining some data collection with data analysis and modeling.
Last updated May 14 2012