Reconstructing the Human Past – Using Ancient and Modern Genomics

Overview

The list of posters, bus schedule, programme and onsite handout (with logistical information) are now available for download.

Symposium Overview

The study of population genetic variation and the sequencing of ancient DNA represent promising new avenues for investigating human history and our evolutionary past. Population-scale sequencing projects investigating human diversity have provided us with more than a million genome wide datasets that allowed new insights into patterns of human variation and mobility, while others have obtained genome wide data from thousands of ancient human skeletons, allowing the investigation of human evolution in action and providing direct insights into population genetic dynamics in situ. Large-scale genetic variation data sets can now be integrated with genomics data from ancient remains and history records to provide novel insights into human history, cultural evolution and the genetic history of societies. Ancient DNA was furthermore used to reconstruct genomic variation of historic pathogens as well as oral and gut microbiomes in order to provide molecular fossils to study microbial evolution through time. This meeting will involve scientists from genomics, bioinformatics, microbiology, anthropology, archaeology and historians and may initiate future interactions in this exciting and timely new research area that has the potential to change the way we think about our human past and how we might study genetic variation in the future.

Session Topics

• Genomic analyses of our closest living and extinct relatives
• Detecting patterns of natural selection
• Reconstructing the genetic history of human populations
• Combining genetics and historical evidence
• Genetic history of domestication
• Evolution of human pathogens and our microbiome

Speakers

Speakers and Trainers

Keynote Speakers

Svante Pääbo

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Germany

Speakers

Joshua Akey

Princeton University

USA

Kirsten Bos

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Germany

Richard Durbin

University of Cambridge

UK

Qiaomei Fu

Chinese Academy of Sciences

China

Patrick J. Geary

Institute for Advanced Study

USA

Agnar Helgason

deCODE genetics

Iceland

Mattias Jakobsson

Uppsala University

Sweden

Henrik Kaessmann

Center for Molecular Biology of Heidelberg University

Germany

Ida Moltke

University of Copenhagen

Denmark

Rasmus Nielsen

University of California, Berkley

USA

John Novembre

University of Chicago

USA

Ludovic Orlando

Toulouse University

France

Maanasa Raghavan

University of Chicago,

USA

Stephan Schiffels

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Germany

Beth Shapiro

University of California, Santa Cruz

USA

Pontus Skoglund

The Francis Crick Institute

UK

Christina Warinner

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Germany

Scientific Organisers

Johannes Krause

Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History

Germany

Anna-Sapfo Malaspinas

University of Lausanne

Switzerland

David Reich

Harvard Medical School

USA

Conference Organisers

Christina Dollt

EMBL Heidelberg

Germany

Programme