CAM colloquium - Friday, May 5
3:30 p.m.
655 Rhodes Hall

Speaker: Simon Myers, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard

Title: Exploring recombination and recombination ‘hotspots’ using genetic variation data

Abstract: In conjunction with mutation, recombination - the process of ‘shuffling’ DNA whereby parents pass on new combinations of their genetic material to offspring - is fundamental in generating genetic diversity within many species, including humans - but despite intensive study, many aspects of it remain mysterious. Several recent projects have generated genetic data in hundreds of unrelated individuals, at millions of locations across the human genome. This data offers an unprecedented opportunity to employ statistical inference to explore human recombination and in particular how the rate of recombination varies along our genome, at very fine scales. Along with this opportunity come serious challenges, relating to the enormous volume of data, and the indirect nature of the information it provides. I will describe how these issues can be addressed by employing powerful evolutionary models of recombination, in conjunction with approximations to the likelihood of the data, and the use of simulation and MCMC techniques. This approach has yielded many new insights into the causes of recombination rate variation at different scales, the evolution of recombination over different timescales, and particular sequence ‘words’ that stimulate concentrated ‘hotspots’ of recombination.

 

Refreshments at 4:30 in 657 Rhodes Hall.