Post-Doctoral Researcher
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Contact information:
Email:
Lab Phone: (520) 626-0404
Fax: (520) 626-8050
Mailing Address:
Room 246,
Biological Sciences West,
1041 East Lowell Street,
University of Arizona,
Tucson, AZ 85721, USA
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Research Interests
There is currently a strong interest in identifying regions of the genome that have been affected by natural selection. The signal of selection at a given locus in the genome may point to functional regions associated with important traits that make humans unique or that underlie differences among human populations. Such differences may reflect adaptations to the varying environmental conditions that humans have encountered, first as their range expanded within and outside of Africa, and later with major cultural transitions, such as the shift to agriculture. However, tests of neutrality are often sensitive to demographic history, and as such the theoretical expectations of the standard neutral model may not be an appropriate null hypothesis to use when testing for departures from neutrality due to either selection or demographic processes. In place of this standard neutral model patterns of variation from multiple neutral loci may be used as an empirical distribution against which to compare variation at a locus of interest.
Current Research:
Skin pigmentation is an example of a complex trait that has likely been shaped by natural selection in response to varying levels of ultraviolet radiation (UVR). While hypotheses exploring the role of selection in shaping normal variation in human skin pigmentation abound, these hypotheses have rarely been tested using population genetic data. Currently I am sequencing regions of eleven pigmentation candidate genes in six populations that differ in skin pigmentation and that occupy environments of varying UVR intensity. I will compare variation in these candidate genes to an empirically neutral dataset of 90 non-coding loci currently being sequenced as part of the Hammer Lab's Hominid Project. I will use these data to test a number of hypotheses about the role of both positive and purifying selection in shaping pigmentation variation across different UVR environments.
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