Public Lecture: “Interpreting Personal Genomes: Promises and Potential Pitfalls” by Carlos D. Bustamante

November 29, 2011

Overview

Presented by Carlos D. Bustamante, Professor of Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine

Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2011
4:30 pm
Franz 1178

A reception will immediately follow the lecture. Cosponsored by UCLA Life Sciences and Clinical and Translational Science Institute (CTSI).

Abstract: Understanding the relative effects of different population genetic forces on the apportionment of human genomic variation is a central focus of medical and population genomics. Much of what we know comes from analyzing patterns of common, and, therefore, ancient genetic polymorphisms via genotyping across diverse human populations. Recent studies have used sequencing approaches to reveal a more complete and genome-wide picture of variation, including lower frequency variants with a more recent evolutionary origin. In this talk, I will present a systematic analysis of 50 human genomes from 11 diverse global populations, sequenced at high coverage. Our sample includes 12 individuals of admixed ancestry that have varying degrees of recent (within the last 500 years) African, Native American, and European ancestry. Using approaches for modeling population history that consider sequence diversity and the length distribution of segments of continuous inferred ancestry, we reconstruct shared and unique aspects of population demographic history based on singly sequenced human genomes that recapitulate extreme bottlenecks at the Out-of-Africa event as well as during the peopling of the Americas.