Museum Exhibit on Our Work!

We collaborated with curators at the Science Museum London to develop an exhibit on how ancient DNA affects us today:

Who Am I? Update case “How can ancient DNA affect you?” Display exploring the ways that the DNA of our ancient ancestors is impacting health today

Photo credit: Science Museum Group Collection
© The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum

If you happen to be in London this spring or summer, check it out!

Catch up with us at ASHG

Alex, Corinne, Mike, and I will be attending the annual American Society for Human Genetics meeting in Vancouver this week. You’ll have plenty of chances to hear about our work. On Wednesday morning, I’ll present a talk entitled “First depleted, then enriched: The evolution of transposable element co-option into gene regulatory function” on our work to understand when and how transposable element derived sequence gain gene regulatory function.

Alex will present a poster on “Genomic context drives the conservation of enhancer activity across species” (PrmNr 2141).

Corinne will present a poster on “Leveraging large-scale clinical biobanks to study recent human evolution (PgmNr 1075)”.

Mike will present a poster on “Comprehensive analysis of the spatial distribution of missense variants in protein structures reveals patterns predictive of pathogenicity (PgmNr 1869)”.

Congratulations to Corinne and Mike for winning Reviewer’s Choice Awards, meaning that their abstracts were in the top 10% of all abstracts. Mike’s work was also selected for the Friday Poster Walk.

New Paper on Genome Stability Published!

We are very pleased that our collaboration with Nasim Sabouri’s group in Sweden in which we show that the Pfh1 DNA helicase interacts with components of replisome to maintain proper fork progression and genome stability has been published in PLOS Genetics! Check it out:

Pfh1 is an accessory replicative helicase that interacts with the replisome to facilitate fork progression and preserve genome integrity

Capra Lab work featured in The Game of Genomes!

Science writer Carl Zimmer recently published a series of narrative essays entitled The Game of Genomes in which he describes his efforts to interpret the sequence of his genome. We were very happy to get the chance to help Carl look at the bits of Neanderthal DNA that remain in his genome. The entire series is great, but check out Episode 11: The Neanderthal Inside to learn what we found.

Welcome Greg Sliwoski!

We are very pleased to welcome our new postdoc, Greg Sliwoski, to the group. Greg received his PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Leipzig in Germany. His research goals include improving rare variant analysis with structural modeling and applying these methods to personalized medicine and drug discovery. His previous research focused on computer-aided drug discovery, GPCR structure prediction and ligand docking, and QSAR descriptor development.

Welcome Laura and Mary Lauren!

We are very pleased welcome new graduate students Laura Colbran and Mary Lauren Benton to the group! Laura has a degree in Biology from Carleton and is in the IGP program. Mary Lauren has a degree in Bioinformatics from Baylor and is in the QCB program.