Harnessing the Power of Evolutionary Knowledge in Genomics and Medicine
On Friday and Saturday (March 23-24) researchers from around the world descended on the Biodesign Institute to take part in the symposium on Phylomedicine hosted by the Center for Evolutionary Medicine & Informatics (CEMI) and sponsored by the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE). Phylomedicine is emerging as an important discipline at the intersection of Molecular Evolution and Genomic Medicine. It focuses on the understanding of human disease and health through the application of long-term molecular evolutionary history. The symposium covered topics relating to the tree of life, viral evolution, human regulatory variation and expression, population genomics, disease mutation diagnosis, and protein function and structure evolution. Many leaders in these fields presented and discussed their recent research findings in the realm of Phylomedicine. There were 21 speakers (12 non-ASU and 9 ASU) with 100 attendees representing Japan, Canada, Spain, Ireland, Mexico, New Zealand and Germany, in addition to the United States.
Evolutionary Medicine is an emerging discipline at the intersection of medicine, genomics, and evolution. It uses evolutionary knowledge to identify functionally important parts of genomes and to predict functional consequences of variations in populations and individuals. By pursuing integrated computer analytical (in silico) and experimental biological approaches, we are making it feasible to evaluate the importance of different parts of the genome and infer the origins and propagation of genetic mutations, with the goal of translating this information in order to ease human suffering and treat disease.
The scientific programs at the Center for Evolutionary Medicine and Informatics bring together university faculty, professional scientists, and students with a commitment to discovery and technology development, to address four primary research themes. Read more...
Each month, innovative research from the Biodesign Institute appears in the world’s premier scientific journals. Many such studies have graced the covers of these journals, showcasing Biodesign research ranging from water remediation to nanometer-scale structures built from DNA.
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