Evolutionary genomics is an interdisciplinary research field that draws inspiration from diverse research areas such as population genetics, molecular evolution and comparative genomics. Much have been learned in the last decade with the sequencing of numerous new genomes, including everything from virus and bacteria to model organisms such as fruit flies and nematodes as well as several vertebrates, none more important that the genome of our own species. With the recent sequencing of some of our closest living relatives we now have an unique opportunity to gain insight into some of the most fundamental questions in evolutionary biology: How, why and when do genomes evolve and which forces are responsible for governing the rate and direction of the evolution of genomes.

At BiRC we are currently involved in several different projects that all in some way or another deal with how, why and when genomes change over time. In particular we work on understanding the variation in evolutionary rates between and within species as well as how it changes over time. To do this we are developing novel models and methods to incorporate divergence and diversity data into large scale comparative analyzes. These types of analyzes have among other things provided valuable new insights into the mammalian evolutionary history and have allowed us to give qualitative and quantitative statements about the evolutionary processed and recent population size dynamics that have shaped the genomes of humans and other primates.