Anna Di Rienzo, from the Department of Human Genetics of the University of Chicago, USA, will give a talk entitled “Human adaptations and the susceptibility to common diseases”, on Wednesday September 10 at 12am at the lecture room 473.10 of the PRBB (C/ Dr. Aiguader, 88). She was invited by Xavier Estivill, from the CRG.

Di Rienzo aims to characterize the amount and patterns of genetic variation in human populations, and to elucidate the forces that shape and maintain this variation. Forces such as demographic change or population structure exert genome-wide effects, while others such as natural selection result in locus-specific effects. Her group integrates the knowledge from population genetics and disease mapping studies. Their empirical work, including the analysis of mitochondrial DNA sequence and microsatellite variation, is complemented by extensive modeling of demography and population structure by computer simulations.