Outreach + Highlights
The AGP laboratory conducts research on the diversity and biological evolution of human populations, with the main objective of reconstructing the history of world settlement since the origin of Homo sapiens.
The AGP laboratory conducts research on the diversity and biological evolution of human populations, with the main objective of reconstructing the history of world settlement since the origin of Homo sapiens.
The main function of HLA class I molecules is to present pathogen-derived peptides to cytotoxic T lymphocytes. This function is assumed to drive the maintenance of an extraordinary amount of polymorphism at each HLA locus, providing an immune advantage to heterozygote individuals capable to present larger repertories of peptides than homozygotes.
Prof. Alicia Sanchez-Mazas was appointed Section Editor of HLA (previously Tissue Antigens), the official journal of the European Federation for Immunogenetics (EFI), and is in charge of the “HLA polymorphism in populations” Section.
Dietary changes associated to shifts in subsistence strategies during human evolution may have induced new selective pressures on phenotypes, as currently held for lactase persistence. Similar hypotheses exist for arylamine N-acetyltransferase 2 (NAT2) mediated acetylation capacity, a well-known pharmacogenetic trait with wide inter-individual variation explained by polymorphisms in the NAT2 gene.
Recent genetic studies have suggested that the colonization of East Asia by modern humans was more complex than a single origin from the South, and that a genetic contribution via a Northern route was probably quite substantial.
We extend the scope of European palaeogenomics by sequencing the genomes of Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,300 years old, 1.4-fold coverage) and Mesolithic (9,700 years old, 15.4-fold) males from western Georgia in the Caucasus and a Late Upper Palaeolithic (13,700 years old, 9.5-fold) male from Switzerland.
Supertypes are groups of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles which bind overlapping sets of peptides due to sharing specific residues at the anchor positions—the B and F pockets—of the peptide-binding region (PBR).
La professeure Alicia Sanchez-Mazas nous éclaire sur l'affirmation de chercheurs américains selon laquelle, nous aurions tous tendance, inconsciemment, à choisir comme amis des individus génétiquement proches de nous.
What differentiates our species from our closest relatives, the great apes, at the genomic level?
Three eminent specialists will address this issue through specific approaches: the story according to chromosome rearrangements, the analysis of the MHC complex, and recent evidence based on next generation sequencing data.
The main objective of this conference is to round-up our knowledge on human genetic diversity in Europeans and to discuss on how to interpret this diversity in relation to both population history and other evolutionary forces like natural selection.
Quarante ans après Kimura, et compte-tenu des développements spectaculaires de la génétique moléculaire et des évidences de sélection dans de nombreaux gènes, qu'en pense-t-on?