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Épigénome et paléogénome

THIERRY GRANGE & EVA-MARIA GEIGL

« Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” (Theodosius Dobzhansky, 1900-1975). Our overarching research theme is the study of the evolution of genomes in effort to deepen our understanding of the relationship between genotypes and phenotypes’ aiming at deepening our understanding of the evolutionary relationship between genotypes and phenotypes. Recent phenotypic adapatations are ideal to identify the underlying genomic evolution while minimizing the the confounding effects of genetic drift. Our laboratory is currently working on several research projects concerning the recent evolution of genomes through the analysis of ancient genomes from fossils, the direct witnesses of evolution. This paleogenomic approach adds a geological or historical time-scale to evolutionary studies anchoring and rendering more robust evolutionary modeling from present-day genomes. We use and develop paleogenetic and paleogenomic approaches to document evolutionary processes occurring over the last hundreds of thousands of years and to push methodological limits to enable the study of more ancient samples and fossils from geographic regions where the hot climate is particularly detrimental to DNA preservation.

We focus on two major research lines: 1) We study animal genomes throughout their domestication processes, as domestication represents a unique, accelerated and human-driven model of evolution of specific genomic regions. 2) We study the genomic evolution of human populations during the peopling of Europe since the last Ice Age.

Keywords : evolution, genomes, ancient DNA, paleogenomics, peopling, domestication

 +33 (0)1 57 27 81 29 / +33 (0)1 57 27 81 32   Contact Thierry GRANGE / Contact Eva-Maria GEIGL    @ThierryGrange5