Sudhir Kumar
Institute for Genomics and Evolutionary Medicine (iGEM), Temple University

 

Nature has been the greatest experimenter on Earth for millennia. New mutations continuously arise in personal genomes, with their fate in populations and species primarily determined by the actions of purifying selection, genetic drift, and positive selection. Comparative sequence analysis at individual, population, and species levels yields a record of their outcomes in form of patterns of conservation and divergence. These molecular evolutionary patterns and their underlying causes are now the foundation of approaches to forecast potentially disruptive mutations found in our personal and somatic genomes. Predictive evolutionary techniques and the associated fundamental research investigations are encompassed by Phylomedicine, which is becoming a key discipline at the intersection of molecular evolution, genomics, and biomedicine. I will present results from studies that illuminate the predominant processes of natural selection in genetic diseases and enable diagnosis of mutations in the Phylomedicine of Mendelian, cancer, and complex diseases.