Abstract

Adaptation by natural selection is the central process in evolution and is at the core of some of the greatest problems facing humanity. From cancer to viral and bacterial pathogenicity, to evolution of drug and pesticide resistance, to agriculture and survival of biological diversity in the face of rapid global change, many of our most daunting challenges are related to rapid evolutionary adaptation. Application of genomic and other high-throughput technologies to the study of rapid evolution is revolutionizing our understanding of evolution by allowing us to observe adaptive change in real time in the laboratory and (semi)natural experimental systems and to study signatures left by positive natural selection in the genomic sequences. Our lab focuses on the development and application of such genomic and analytical methods in order to build theoretically and empirically rich theory of adaptive evolution.