Evolutionary Genomics of Human Health and Disease

The Wildman lab uses evolutionary and genomics techniques to understand human phenotypes and features that are relevant to human health and disease. Two particular areas of interest are 1) the evolution of pregnancy, 2) the effects of traumatic stress on human biology. The group’s research is global and population-based studies have or are being conducted in Africa, Asia, South America and North America. Evolutionary studies have focused on the emergence of key human features such as our relatively large brain and the anatomy of the placenta. The group is interested in understanding how obstetrical syndromes such as preterm birth and preeclampsia became common in the human species and whether these syndromes are also common in other mammalian species. Techniques used in the lab include computational biology, phylogenetic methods, next generation sequencing, and epigenetic analysis.