The VILLUM FOUNDATION awards grants to young researchers
Søren Besenbacher, Bioinformatics Research Centre (BiRC), receives DKK 2.6 million for a project entitled 'Disentangling mutation and selection in human evolution'.
This study will use bioinformatic methods to examine data from genome sequencing of pairs of parents and children in order to determine local differences in the human mutation rate and investigate what causes these differences. This will contribute to the understanding of serious genetic disorders such as schizophrenia and will also make it possible to disentangle the effect of the mutation from the effect of other evolutionary forces such as selection.