The Molecular Systems Evolution research group studies molecular evolution at distinct organizational levels. Its central goal is understanding the interaction between stochastic processes and natural selection. Our research questions are articulated around three major axes: (1) modelling the genealogical process of neutral sequence evolution to infer the history of populations, (2) characterising adaptive processes in time and along genomes, with a focus on the role of epistatic interactions, and (3) studying the evolution of the so-called expression noise and its contribution to regulatory networks evolution. The first axis relies on population genetic modelling, specifically coalescence theory, and hidden Markov chains to design new population genomics inference tools. The second axis builds on fitness landscapes theory, population genetics, and structural biology. The third axis is a new venture in the realm of evolutionary single-cell biology, for which we developed new statistical models and designed experimental protocols to generate new comparative datasets.
Our PhD student Fernanda Giersdorf and lab head Julien Dutheil traveled to Tübingen for SMBE Satellite Meeting on Origin, Maintenance, and Evolution of Biological Noise. Fernanda presented her research on the evolution of stochastic gene expression in yeast. A few days of fascinating talks and lively discussions on randomness in biology — and in life.
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We got a brand new Doctor in the lab!
Jinyang Liang successfully defended his PhD titled “Population Genomic Inference with the Ancestral Recombination Graph (ARG): Recombination Landscape and Ancestral State Reconstruction” — huge congrats! Also known in the lab as the resident Python debugger, we are very happy he will be sticking around a bit longer!
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Conference season kicked off strong! Our PhD student Rasit Durak presented his research at Biology of Genomes 2025 at Cold Spring Harbor Lab in New York, U.S.A. and then at EMPSEB30 — the European Meeting for PhD Students in Evolutionary Biology in Milovy, Czechia.
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The group has moved to new quarters at the department of Theoretical Biology!
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