Chromosome rearrangements

Chromosomal variation plays an important role in many evolutionary processes, including local adaptation and speciation. Advances in sequencing technology have shown that rearrangements are ubiquitous in nature and have opened up the possibility of testing hypotheses about the evolutionary forces maintaining chromosomal polymorphism using population genomic data. However, we lack an adequate theoretical and statistical framework for such tests.

To this end, we have developed models to study the conditions under which rearrangements evolve and the molecular signatures associated with these evolutionary histories. We were also involved in developing algorithms for the efficient simulation of polymorphic chromosome inversions and informative summary statistics for population genomic data from these regions, and in implementing likelihood approaches to quantifying the evolutionary forces that maintain inversion clines in nature.