African Biology, Genetics Expert Presents at UA’s ALLELE Series

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A University of Pennsylvania biologist will present the next installment of the 2013-2014 Alabama’s Lecture on Life’s Evolution, or ALLELE, Series with her lecture “African Evolutionary Genomics: Implications for Human Origins and Disease.”

Dr. Sarah Tishkoff’s lecture will be Feb. 27 at 7:30 p.m. in the Biology Building auditorium, room 127, on The University of Alabama campus.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

This year marks the eighth year of the ALLELE series, which is an interdisciplinary lecture series organized by UA’s Evolution Working Group.

Tishkoff is a professor in the genetics and biology departments at Penn, holding appointments in the School of Medicine and the School of Arts and Sciences.

Tishkoff studies variations in the genetics, as well as the physical characteristics, of ethnically diverse Africans. Her research combines fieldwork, laboratory research and computational methods to examine African population history. She examines how genetic variation can affect a wide range of practical issues – for example, why humans have different susceptibility to disease, how they metabolize drugs and how they adapt through evolution.

Tishkoff is a recipient of the National Institutes of Health Pioneer Award, the David and Lucile Packard Career Award and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award. She is a Penn Integrates Knowledge endowed chair. She is on the editorial boards at Genome Research; Evolution, Medicine and Public Health; Molecular Biology and Evolution; G3 (Genes, Genomes, and Genetics); and The Quarterly Review of Biology. Her research is supported by grants from the NIH and the National Science Foundation.

The ALLELE Series is supported by UA’s College of Arts and Sciences and the departments of anthropology, biological sciences, chemistry, communicative disorders, geological sciences, philosophy, physics and religious studies.

The ALLELE lecture series is part of UA’s College of Arts and Sciences, the University’s largest division and the largest liberal arts college in the state. Students from the College have won numerous national awards including Rhodes Scholarships, Goldwater Scholarships and memberships on the USA Today Academic All American Team.