Researchers from Aarhus University and Copenhagen Zoo have discovered that the human mutation rate is significantly slower than for our closest primate relatives. The new knowledge may be important for estimates of when the common ancestor for humans and chimpanzees lived - and for conservation of large primates in the wild.

Nature Genetics, Dec 2018: Doug Speed from BiRC, together with David Balding, University of Melbourne, have created SumHer, a new software for analyzing results from genetic association studies.

Professor Mikkel Heide Schierup, BiRC, has been awarded a Distinguished Investigator Grant of DKK 10 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation for the research project 'The Extraordinary Evolution of Human Sex'.

Bjarni Vilhjalmsson from BiRC has contributed to a new paper in Science that shows how parental genotypes affect the phenotypes of the children, even those genes that are not transmitted.

Researchers from BiRC has assembled 100 new MHC haplotypes. Before this new landmark only 8 complete haplotypes were described.

Abstract: Genes in the major histocompatibility complex (MHC, also known as HLA) play a critical role in the immune response and variation within the extended 4 Mb region shows association with major risks of many diseases. Yet, deciphering the underlying causes of these associations is difficult because the MHC is the most polymorphic region of the genome with a complex linkage disequilibrium structure.

Antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria is a growing global challenge. Danish researchers have now discovered that bacteria use a code language to avoid being controlled. Understanding this code language will be paramount to developing new antibiotics in the future.

Evolution can go quickly when it has to – at least for small organisms. Researchers exposed a natural setting in Denmark to artificial climate change and discovered that soil just half a degree warmer caused the genome of small worms to change surprisingly quickly.