Jointly Modeling the Effects of Evolutionary Processes on Genomic Variation

The Johri lab is interested in better characterizing the shape of the distribution of fitness effects of new mutations in organisms and on understanding how selection on functionally important regions affects genome-wide patterns of variation. Population genomic inference currently does not account for the effects of selection across the genome, which is especially problematic in species with compact genomes (i.e., those with a high density of protein-coding and regulatory regions) where natural selection is pervasive. We develop statistical and computational methods that simultaneously account for the effects of selection jointly with other evolutionary processes to make accurate evolutionary inferences (such as historical changes in population size) using sequence variation from natural populations. As most pathogenic species tend to have highly compact genomes and experience strong bouts of selection and drastic repeated bottlenecks, our methodological advances and recent theoretical efforts will be important to uncovering their population and selective history.