Understanding domestication in the genomic era

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• Dr. Laurent Frantz (1,2)
• Friday 12 March 2021, 13:15-14:00
• Online via zoom.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Laura Courto.

https://cam-ac-uk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYrc-2hqjkjGtYroR2imIYvJZ9Wb9ECRVG5

1 Palaeogenomics Group, Department of Veterinary Sciences, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany

2 School of Biological and Chemical Sciences, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK

Beginning with dogs over 15,000 years ago, the domestication of plants and animals has played a key role in the development of modern societies. Given its fundamental importance, a vast literature from a wide variety of academic disciplines has explored and explained the origins of domestication. For example, domestication has fascinated evolutionary biologists for decades because of the dramatic impact that artificial selection played in the evolution of traits in both domestic plants and animals. Genomic information, extracted from both modern and archaeological samples have had a tremendous impact on our understanding of animal domestication, not only allowing us to better retrace their origin but also to understand fundamental evolutionary processes (e.g. the role of gene-flow from wild populations). Here I will present novel ancient genomics data-sets from world wide sampling of pigs, dogs and chickens how this new source of data is revolutionising our understanding of their domestication history.

Laurent Frantz obtained his PhD from Wageningen University in 2015, and spent three years at the University of Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow. His is now a Professor of Palaeogenomics at the Ludwig Maximilian University in London and a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. Laurent played a major role in the first analysis of the pig genome, the first recombination map for the pig genome and wrote some of the first papers using large scale modern and ancient genomics to address question related to speciation, and pig, dogs and chickens domestication. His group is also involved in multiple conservation genetics projects focusing on ungulates species in Island Southeast Asia. Laurent is the holder of two Natural Environmental Council research grants (NERC) and an ERC starting grant entitled: “Linking livestock genetic diversity with three thousand years of agricultural crises and resilience”.

This talk is part of the Pitt-Rivers Archaeological Science Seminar Series series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• Online via zoom
• Pitt-Rivers Archaeological Science Seminar Series

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