Xinjun Zhang
University of Michigan, MI·Genetics
Human populations have mixed again and again throughout history, and this mixing, called admixture, has shaped our genetic diversity and health. It includes ancient interbreeding with archaic humans such as Neanderthals (archaic introgression) as well as recent mixing among modern populations.
- Fields
Genetics
Ecology & Evolution
Computer Science
- Topics
admixture
human population genetics
population genomics
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2029
What they work on
- Develop machine learning methods to detect archaic introgression from unknown 'ghost' archaic humans in East Asian genomes.
- Use the evolutionary paths of adaptive introgression gene regions to reconstruct a detailed population history of South Americans.
- Model, with simulations, how recent admixture changes the genetic architecture of complex traits, and develop statistical methods for more accurate trait prediction in admixed populations.
- Track how admixture and natural selection reshape genomes over generations in interbreeding Drosophila species, and how admixture affects fitness and traits in a rhesus macaque colony with long-term records.
More about the research
Yet scientists still cannot fully reconstruct these histories. Most genetic databases also underrepresent non-European people, so the genetics of traits and diseases in admixed populations is poorly understood. This research combines new computational methods with genome data and experiments to understand admixture's history and biological effects.
Why it matters
Leaving admixture out of genetic studies, or modeling it wrongly, can lead to errors in biomedical uses such as predicting disease risk. Better methods for predicting traits in admixed populations could improve genetic risk prediction for underserved groups that are underrepresented in biobanks. Over time, this may help reduce health disparities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
David E Reich
Harvard University, MA·Genetics
Assemble an ancient DNA time series of 34,000 West Eurasians, enough to measure natural selection coefficients as small as about 0.25%, and release it as a public resource before publication.
Mateus Gouveia
Morehouse School of Medicine, GA·Genetics·Early-career
Map subcontinental ancestries across Africa, the Americas, and Europe by assembling genome-wide data on roughly 75,000 ancestrally diverse individuals and applying current population genomics methods.
Kirk Lohmueller
University of California-Los Angeles, CA·Genetics
Infer the distribution of fitness effects for noncoding regulatory mutations by combining large-scale functional genomic data with polymorphism data, since most disease-associated variants fall outside protein-coding genes.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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