Population Genomics

Species evolve constantly over time as individuals are born, reproduce and die. Doing so their genomes pass on from parents to offspring, modified by mutations and shuffled through recombination. Constraints placed on the ability of individuals to survive in their environment, to chose their mates, to produce surviving offspring … will impact the way genomes change over time. In return, patterns of diversity observed in present day genomes carry information on these constraints and therefore on the evolutionary history of populations in the past and on biological processes that affect the way genomes are transmitted. The field of population genomics aims at developping new ways to interpret genetic data recorded on whole genomes in order to gain insight into the past history of populations and to apply them to one’s favourite species.