Joshua Akey, Ph.D.
Professor of Genome Sciences
University of Washington
Excavating archaic hominin DNA from the genomes of modern humans
Anatomically modern humans overlapped in time and space and mated with archaic forms of humans such as Neandertals and Denisovans. We have developed methods to identify remnants of archaic hominin genomes that persist in the DNA of modern humans, and I will discuss ongoing efforts to excavate archaic lineages in genome-scale data from geographically diverse populations. I will also describe efforts to characterize the functional, phenotypic, and fitness consequences of hybridization. These data provide important new insights into hominin evolutionary history how interactions with archaic hominins influenced the trajectory of modern human evolution.
