CCMB Seminar 4/2/25: Ben Peter, University of Rochester скачать в хорошем качестве

CCMB Seminar 4/2/25: Ben Peter, University of Rochester

"Neandertal ancestry through time: Insights from genomes of ancient and present-day humans" Ben Peter, PhD; Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Rochester; Research Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Abstract: Gene flow between Neanderthals, Denisovans and modern humans had major impacts on shared genetic and phenotypic variation. Here, we are introducing admixfrog, a new method to detect the traces of gene flow from low-coverage ancient genomes. We show that gene flow between Neandertals and Denisovans was likely common, and spanned more than a 100,000 years. We also generate a catalog of Neanderthal ancestry segments spanning the past 50,000 years of modern human history. We find that the vast majority of Neanderthal gene flow is attributable to a single, shared extended period of gene flow that occurred between 50,500 to 43,500 years ago, as evidenced by ancestry correlation, colocalization of Neanderthal segments across individuals, and divergence from the sequenced Neanderthals. Most natural selection—positive and negative—on Neanderthal variants occurred rapidly after the gene flow. Our findings provide new insights into how gene flow shaped human origins and adaptation. Bio: Since January 2024, I am both an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at the University of Rochester. Since November 2017, I am also a Research Group Leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig (Germany). Before that, I was a postdoc with John Novembre at the University of Chicago, and I received my PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, jointly advised by Rasmus Nielsen and Monty Slatkin. I am widely interested in methods and applications of population and evolutionary genetics. Currently, I am primarily focussed on analyzing Neandertal DNA from fossils with minimal DNA preservation, and studying the interactions of Neandertals, Denisovans and early humans through time. I am also interested in theory and methods to conceptualize, formalize and estimate population structure, particularly from large, heterogeneous samples.