Science at Cal - Uncovering the Past: Using Genetic Data to Understand Human History and Evolution

Recent advances in sequencing DNA have opened up new opportunities to use genetic data to improve our understanding of human history and evolution. For example, genetic data can be used to reconstruct migration patterns, understand how genomes change across different species or lineages, and understand how our evolutionary history impacts disease and adaptation. To illustrate this work, Dr. Priya Moorjani, Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Molecular and Cell Biology and Center of Computational Biology, will discuss two ongoing projects within her lab: 1) Reconstructing the history of human-Neanderthal mixture using ancient genomes, and 2) Characterizing the patterns of major mixture events occurring in ancient Europe; both critical movements in human history. These analyses highlight the power of genomic data to elucidate the legacy of human migrations, providing insights that complement research done in archaeology and linguistics.

Speaker: Priya Moorjani, UC Berkeley