Lab Research Assistant Position Available

I have a Laboratory Research Assistant position open in my lab. Apply if you might have an interest in working with us on our vaginal microbiome projects. We can adjust the position to a wide variety of experience and training.

LINK to apply is online: https://umb.taleo.net/careersection/jobdetail.ftl?job=1900013V&lang=en

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

Thanks!

Rebecca M. Brotman, PhD, MPH

Associate Professor

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health

Institute for Genome Sciences

University of Maryland School of Medicine

670 West Baltimore Street, Room #3175

Baltimore, MD     21201

phone: (410) 706-6767

fax: (410) 706-1482

email: rbrotman@som.umaryland.edu

MEB Seminar | Dr. Sheila Kitchen

Dr. Sheila Kitchen
Post-Doc, California Institute of Technology, PI: Dr. Joseph Parker
Research Website

Adaptive potential and limits in Caribbean acroporid corals

Tuesday, August 27
12 PM
AHF 153 (Torrey Webb Room)

Abstract: Reef-building corals are currently threatened by rapid changes in local and global stressors, and hybridization offers a potential shortcut for rapid adaptation and evolutionary rescue in these species. The sympatric corals Acropora palmata and A. cervicornis form the hybrid, A. prolifera, whose abundance has continued to increase while the parental species decline. Previous work indicates that weakened prezygotic isolation mechanisms in A. cervicornis but not A. palmata could allow for continuous unidirectional gene flow between the two species. Furthermore, asymmetric introgression from A. palmata to A. cervicornis has been recorded in three nuclear loci. In contrast, we found evidence for bidirectional introgession across three hybrid zones, although the frequency of hybrids and backcrosses differs across the range. Genome assemblies of A. palmataand A. cervicornis were compared to other corals to identify orthologs uniquely shared by the Caribbean acroporids. Genomic sequence data from the two parental species and their hybrids was used to further characterize the patterns of genomic synteny, divergence and introgression across hybrid zones. Combined, these approaches elucidate genomic hotspots of introgression and parallel evolution with implications for how hybridization may shape adaptation in these important foundation species across the Caribbean and North-West Atlantic.

Host: Dr. Carly Kenkel

QCB Colloquium | Dr. Charleston Chiang

Dr. Charleston Chiang
Assistant Professor, USC Keck School of Medicine, Center for Genetic Epidemiology, Preventive Medicine
Lab Website

The impact of demographic history and natural selection on human complex traits: examples from Sardinia and Finland

Thursday, August 29, 2019
2 PM

RRI 101

Abstract: How complex traits change through time is a central question in evolutionary biology and genetics. Two of the major evolutionary forces that shaped the distribution of human complex traits are the demographic and adaptive histories of a population. Therefore, in order for human genetics to provide a compelling context to study complex trait evolution, it is necessary to integrate genetic mapping with a detailed knowledge of population history. A well-known example of demographic impact on complex traits is a population bottleneck followed by long-term isolations. I will use examples from European populations of Sardinia and Finland to illustrate the impact of the demographic history on patterns of genetic variation and human complex traits. By utilizing large-scale whole-genome or whole-exome sequencing datasets, I will describe our findings in delineating the population structure and history of these populations, and how the special population history empowered association studies. Moreover, natural selection through polygenic adaptation is also thought to be an important force in shaping the complex traits of extant populations. Adult height differences across European populations had been thought of as the prime example of polygenic adaptation in humans, until recent papers demonstrated that the differences across Europe might have been over-estimated due to uncorrected biases in genome-wide association studies (GWAS). I will show that by using GWAS summary statistics ascertained from an East Asian population, we continue to see signature consistent with polygenic adaptation at height-associated loci in at least some European populations.

Host:  Andrew Smith