<\/p>\n
September 2025 —\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/strong>Global impact of micronutrients in modern human evolution\u00a0<\/a>just published in the AJHG<\/em>, led by former PhD student Jasmin Rees, and with Sergi Castellano. We use Fst and ARGs to investigate signatures of local adaptation in over 200 genes involved in the uptake, metabolism or regulation of 13 micronutriets, finding evidence that \u00a0adaptation to the local levels of dietary micronutrients (which vary widely around the world) have shaped human diversity and, likely, diet-related health.\u00a0UCL news piece here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2025 <\/span>—\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/strong>New collaboration project now\u00a0as a preprint in medRxiv<\/em>:\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Sudan\u2019s complex genetic admixture history drives adaptation to malaria in Sudanese Copts<\/a>, by Laura Vil\u00e0-Valls et al. Led by the lab of David Comas<\/a>\u00a0(UPF, Barcelona), the work describes the genetics of Sudanese populations. We helped\u00a0identify signatures of adaptive introgression in the malaria-associated ACKR1<\/em> gene during the research stay\u00a0of Laura Vil\u00e0-Valls<\/a>\u00a0in our group.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n July 2025 —\u00a0<\/strong>New collaborative paper from the Dennis lab<\/a> (led by Daniela Soto and Jos\u00e9 M. Uribe-Salazar) just published in Cell:\u00a0<\/em>Human-specific gene expansions contribute to brain evolution<\/a>. In it, we identify hundreds of duplicated genes in the human genome and investigate their potential functions (with a focus on brain development) and evolutionary history in humans (with a focus on natural selection).\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n May 2025 —<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Finley’s first paper in bioRxiv<\/em>! May climate drive local genetic adaptation in the mitochondrial DNA? Answer here:\u00a0Climate associated natural selection in the human mitochondrial genome<\/a>, led by him and his first PhD supervisor Flo Camus<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 2025 —<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0We have published a piece in The Conversation on our recent work:\u00a0Chimpanzee genes have changed over time to suit local conditions \u2013 new study<\/a>. French translation here<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n January 2025<\/span>\u00a0\u2013<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Starting the year with a paper, this time in Science<\/em>.<\/em>\u00a0Local genetic adaptation to habitat in wild chimpanzees<\/a> just came out in final form. In this project, led by our very own Harrison Ostridge<\/a> (now PhD) and part of the brilliant\u00a0PanAf project consortium<\/a>, this study provides the first evidence of local genetic adaptation in wild chimpanzees. Analysing hundreds of exomes from faecal samples, together with environmental data, we find signatures of local genetic adaptation to habitat, both to forests and woodland-savannahs. In forest the strongest signature is of adaptation to pathogens, including to malaria in the same genes that mediate resistance and adaptation to malaria in humans. Credit Kevin Langergraber: The Ngogo Chimpanzee Project<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n October 2024<\/span> \u2013<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>New paper! \u00a0Deep Genetic Substructure within Bonobos<\/a>, just published in Current\u00a0Biology<\/em>! This is a years-long project co-led by Sojung Han<\/a>* and Cesare de Filippo<\/a>* where we reveal high levels of genetic substructure in bonobos, with deep divergence times and surprisingly small estimated effective population sizes. Congratulations to Sojung and Cesare for bringing this to the finish line.<\/p>\n See translations to several languages of a summary of the paper in our new Translations<\/a> page. And\u00a0UCL news here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Credit Cesare de Filippo, original picture Martin Surbeck\u00a0Kokolopori Bonobo Research Project<\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2024 — <\/span><\/strong>Kishan Sisodiya has joined the group as MRes student working on the identification of signatures of balancing selection in genomes, together with Debora Brandt and Max Reuter.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2024<\/span><\/strong> –<\/span> Harrison Ostridge has graduated. Congratulations Dr Ostridge!! His thesis and public viva (back in July) were both excellent.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n July 2024 –<\/span> <\/strong>Another summer, another great SMBE meeting<\/a>. This time in Mexico, where Aida gave a Keynote Talk on Local Genetic Adaptation in Humans and Other Primates<\/em>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n July 2024 –<\/strong> <\/span>Another preprint,\u00a0Local genetic adaptation to habitat in wild chimpanzees<\/a><\/em>, phenomenal effort with the PanAf consortium<\/a>, led in our group by\u00a0<\/span>Harrison J.<\/span> Ostridge<\/span><\/span>, is now on the bioRxiv.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n June 2024 –<\/span> <\/strong>Our preprint\u00a0Deep Genetic Substructure within Bonobos<\/em><\/a>, by\u00a0Sojung Han*, Cesare de Filippo* and others has just appeared on the bioRxiv.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n May 2024 –<\/strong><\/span> Harrison Ostridge has defended his PhD thesis Local Genetic Adaptation in Chimpanzees, with only minor revisions.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 2024 –<\/span> <\/strong>Jasmin Rees’s paper\u00a0Ancient Loss of Catalytic Selenocysteine Spurred Convergent Adaptation in a Mammalian Oxidoreductase<\/em> <\/a>has been published in GBE.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n January 2024 –<\/span> <\/strong>Our paper Signatures of Balancing Selection in the Human Genome<\/a><\/em>, Bitarello et al., GBE 2018, has been selected for GBE’s virtual issue<\/a> of influential papers on inferential methods published in the journal, published to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the birth of MBE.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n December 2023 –<\/strong> <\/span>Alfie Gleeson has graduated from his PhD on The genetic and morphological evolution of facial morphology<\/em>, congratulations Dr Gleeson!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2023<\/span><\/strong> – After graduating, Dr Jasmin Rees gave a fantastic “public viva” talk of her PhD work The role of micronutrients in genetic adaptation<\/em>\u00a0to the department. Congratulations on your graduation and on a brilliant talk Jas!!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2023<\/strong> <\/span>– Our paper on human genetic adaptation to cold ambient temperature<\/a> is among the top 10% most viewed papers in PLoS Genetics in 2022 and in the PLoS Genetics Top 10% collection of most cited papers<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n July 2023 –<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Really fun first in-person SMBE meeting in years in Ferrara, Italy. Many group members presented their work as talks or posters. See Harrison’s talk on a proper Italian theatre…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 2023 –<\/strong> <\/span>Ghost admixture in eastern gorillas<\/a><\/em>\u00a0by Harvi Pawar, part of her PhD work with Martin Kuhlwilm and Tomas Marques-Bonet, now published in Nature Ecology and Evolution.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n May 2023 –<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0Dean Cornish has graduated for his MPhil! His thesis is on Inferences of Local Genetic Adaptation from Palaeolithic Hunter Gatherers<\/em>. Congratulations Dean!!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 2023 –\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>Check out our review on Inferring Balancing Selection From Genome-Scale Data<\/em><\/a>, Bitarello et al., just published in GBE with our great collaborators B\u00e1rbara Bitarello<\/a>\u00a0and Diogo Meyer<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 2023 –<\/span> <\/strong>NERC DTP PhD student Finley Glover is joining the group! He will work on the evolution of mito-nuclear interactions in humans and flies with Flo Camus<\/a> (who is his first supervisor) and us.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 2023 –<\/strong> <\/span>The Ghost admixture in eastern gorillas<\/a><\/em> preprint by Harvi Pawar, part of her PhD work with Martin Kuhlwilm and Tomas Marques-Bonet, is on BiorXiv.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n January 2023 – <\/span><\/strong>\u00a0Most of us attended the great PopGroup meeting in London, many talks by the group including a keynote by Aida on local adaptation in humans and chimpanzees.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n October 2022 – <\/span><\/strong>Not news from our group, but exciting.\u00a0<\/span>Svante P\u00e4\u00e4bo, the director of our department when we were in Leipzig, has been awarded the Nobel Prize<\/a>!! Amazing recognition to his work and to the importance of the fields of human evolutionary genetics and ancient DNA.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n October 2022<\/span> <\/strong>– D\u00e9bora Brandt has joined the group. D\u00e9bora is a a postdoc joining us from Rasmus Nielsen’s lab in Berkeley to study balancing selection in natural populations of Drosophila, with Max Reuter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Check it out on our publications page<\/a>. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2022<\/strong><\/span> – Two postdocs join the group!\u00a0Avishikta Chakraborty joins us from Monash University (Australia) and Abhilesh Dhawanjewar from University of Nebraska (USA) to study sexually antagonistic genetic variants \u00a0in fruit flies using experimental evolution, with Max Reuter<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n June 2022<\/strong><\/span> – Aida has recorded a lecture for the general public on the genetics of local adaptation in humans at the Gresham College<\/a>.\u00a0Watch it here.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n June 2022<\/span><\/strong> – The paper of a long-term collaboration with with Claudia Fontserre and his supervisor Tomas Marques-Bonet, led by Tomas and Mimi\u00a0Arandjelovic and involving many others, is now out.\u00a0Population dynamics and genetic connectivity in recent chimpanzee history<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0where hundreds of chimpanzee non-invasive samples were used by the team to infer the fine-scale demographic history of wild chimpanzees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n May 2022<\/strong><\/span> – New preprint, Genetic adaptations to SIV across chimpanzee populations<\/a><\/em>. Led by Harvinder Pawar, this study analyses full genomes of chimpanzees and identifies very interesting signatures of genetic adaptation to SIV in chimpanzees.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n February 2022<\/strong> – Jasmin and Aida wrote a perspective\u00a0for Science<\/em> on a paper that reports the largest genetic genealogy of humans to date. <\/p>\n January 2022\u00a0<\/strong>– Harrison Ostridge won the first ever Best Twitter Flash Presentation<\/em> at the 55th Popgroup meeting. Fantastic Twitter Thread<\/a>, obviously. He was interviewed in the Heredity Podcast<\/a> too. <\/p>\n December 2021\u00a0<\/strong>– We have been awarded two grants to study the population genetics of sexual antagonism in fruit flies, together with Max Reuter<\/a>. We’ll be hiring several postdocs\u00a0<\/a>soon.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n November 2021\u00a0<\/strong>– David Reher\u00a0successfully defended his PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. We followed the defence online. Amazing work, Dr. Reher!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2020 – 2022\u00a0<\/strong>– The four PhD students in the group passed their upgrade during the pandemic. Well done!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n 2020 – 2022\u00a0<\/strong>– There was this pandemic, not sure if you heard about it?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n May 2020\u00a0<\/strong>– Check out our invited review on The genomics of human local adaptation<\/a><\/em> in Trends in Genetics<\/em>, led by Jasmin Rees in the group, and with Sergi Castellano<\/a> at the UCL Institute of Child Health<\/span>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n March 2020\u00a0<\/strong>– New paper on the\u00a0Identification of Structural Variation in Chimpanzees Using Optical Mapping and Nanopore Sequencin<\/a><\/em>\u00a0in Genes<\/em>. Soto et al.,<\/em><\/a> led by the group of our long-term collaborator Megan Dennis<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n December 2019 <\/strong>– Our paper The impact of genetic adaptation on chimpanzee subspecies differentiation<\/em><\/a>, which revealed likely adaptation to the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus in eastern and central chimpanzees, is published in PLoS Genetics<\/em>. It was led by postdoc Josh Schmidt<\/a> (now at the University of Adelaide) and in collaboration with Sergi Castellano<\/a> at the UCL Institute of Child Health.<\/span> <\/p>\n September 2019<\/strong><\/span> – New paper!\u00a0Evolutionary and functional impact of common polymorphic inversions in the human genome<\/em><\/a>\u00a0has been published in Nature Communications<\/em>. Ginger et al.,<\/em> NatComm (2019)<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2019<\/strong><\/span> – Sojung Han successfully defended her PhD thesis at the PRBB in Barcelona. Congratulations, Dr. Han!<\/p>\n <\/p>\n September 2019<\/strong><\/span> – Our paper<\/a>\u00a0on local adaptation of human cold receptor TRPM8<\/em>, led by former PhD student Felix Key<\/a> (now at Harvard), has been Highly Recognized<\/em> by PLoS Genetics: among the three best nominated papers published in the journal in 2018. <\/p>\n September 2019<\/strong> <\/span>– Congratulations to Derron Abdulla, who defended his project and graduated from his MSc.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\nSee translations to several languages in our Translations<\/a> page. UCL news here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2025\/01\/Kevin_Langergraber-Jolie-15-300x200.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/10\/bonobo_cover_v2withcredit-291x300.png\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2024\/07\/IMG_7720-261x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2023\/09\/HarrisonSMBE2023-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-07-at-13.58.59-300x169.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nSeptember 2022<\/span> <\/strong>– The MSci project of Harvi Pawar is now published in PLoS Genetics.\u00a0Genetic adaptations to SIV across chimpanzee populations<\/a><\/em>. We present evidence of genetic adaptation in chimpanzees to the zoonotic transmission of the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus (SIV), the precursor of HIV. Interesting differences and similarities in the mechanisms of adaptation across time and populations.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/11\/Fig1-300x252.jpeg\")
<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n
\nTwitter feed here<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/06\/Screenshot-2022-06-20-at-13.37.33-1-300x170.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/12\/Screenshot-2022-12-15-at-12.19.01-231x300.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nCheck it out on our publications page<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/11\/figure_v3-e1667570094524-282x300.png\")
<\/p>\n
\nHuge congratulations Harrison! \u00a0UGI, GEE News piece<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-05-at-11.30.11-242x300.png\")
<\/a>\u00a0![\"\"](\"http:\/\/wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk\/evol-genome\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/45\/2022\/07\/Screenshot-2022-07-05-at-11.28.26-300x117.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nUCL news piece<\/a><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nUGI,GEE News piece<\/a>. Announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n