Variation at functional genes involved in immune response is of increasing concern as wildlife diseases continue to emerge and threaten populations. The amount of standing genetic variation in a population is directly associated with its potential for rapid adaptation to novel e…
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Subsistence strategy—the method by which a population obtains its food—has likely exerted strong selective pressure on humans for much of our evolutionary history. The genomes of 929 individuals from 54 populations in the HDGP-CEPH dataset were analyzed to characterize populatio…
Yemen sits at the crossroads of human trade and migration routes critical to understanding many aspects of recent human evolution. An understanding of the population history of Yemen is important for fully appreciating the role that this human corridor has played in human evolut…
Long-term interactions between viruses and their hosts often develop into genetic arms races, which result in fast-evolving proteins (i.e. proteins evolving under positive natural selection), especially in immune proteins. A bioinformatic screen of proteins in a component of the…
Modern genomic sequencing technologies provide the opportunity to address longstanding questions in molecular evolution with empirical data. In this dissertation, I combine this new technology with advances in statistical population genetics to describe how deleterious mutations…
A central question in genetics asks how genetic variation influences phenotypic variation. The distribution of genetic variation in a population is reflective of the evolutionary forces that shape and maintain genetic diversity such as mutation, natural selection, and genetic dr…