Welcome!
Our research focuses on inter-primate comparisons at the sequence and expression levels with the long-term goals of identifying genomic regions of functional importance, understanding human gene regulatory processes and elucidating the genetic architecture of human-specific traits.
We are using a novel multi-species cDNA array to compare expression levels between different primate species without the confounding effect of sequence mismatches on hybridization intensity. Our goal is to identify genes whose regulation in humans has evolved under natural selection. Further experiments are aimed at understanding the mechanism of transcription regulation (cis or trans) for individual genes or genes involved in the same biochemical pathways.
A second project in the lab is the study of olfactory receptor (OR) genes. We are interested in the evolution of the OR gene family in humans, as well as in their expression and regulation, both in the olfactory epithelium as well as in other tissues (such as testis).