Melissa Ilardo

University of Utah | UOU

Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene1–5. Here, to investigate the cross-continental effects of these migrations, we shotgun-sequenced 317 genomes—mainly from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods—from across northern and western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genot...

Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene. To investigate the cross-continental impacts we shotgun-sequenced 317 primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic genomes from across Northern and Western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genotypes from >1,600 ancient humans. Our analyse...

The Bajau Sea Nomads were recently demonstrated to have evolved larger spleens as an adaptation to millennia of a marine foraging lifestyle. The large-spleen phenotype appears to derive from increases in thyroid hormone (TH) production as a result of reduced expression of phosphodiesterase 10A (PDE10A), though the exact mechanism remains unknown. T...

Life uses a common set of 20 coded amino acids (CAAs) to construct proteins. This set was likely canonicalized during early evolution; before this, smaller amino acid sets were gradually expanded as new synthetic, proofreading and coding mechanisms became biologically available. Many possible subsets of the modern CAAs or other presently uncoded am...

Identifying the causes of similarities and differences in genetic disease prevalence among humans is central to understanding disease etiology. While present-day humans are not strongly differentiated, vast amounts of genomic data now make it possible to study subtle patterns of genetic variation. This allows us to trace our genomic history thousan...

Contribution to the DLR-IMF-ATP Annual Report 2017

Modern humans inhabit most of earth's harshest environments and display a wide array of lifestyles. Biological adaptations, in addition to technological innovations, have enabled these geographical and cultural explorations. The study of these adaptations helps not only to fundamentally understand our evolution as a species, but also may have incre...

The standard alphabet of the 20 genetically encoded amino acids is considered to have been selected during early evolution from a larger pool of α-amino acids based on its coverage of the chemical space. Chemical space is here defined by charge, size and hydrophobicity, leading to 6-tuples representing coverage, which is composed of range and evenn...

Over the last decade, studies of ancient biomolecules—particularly ancient DNA, proteins, and lipids—have revolutionized our understanding of evolutionary history. Though initially fraught with many challenges, the field now stands on firm foundations. Researchers now successfully retrieve nucleotide and amino acid sequences, as well as lipid signa...

Ancient steppes for human equestrians The Eurasian steppes reach from the Ukraine in Europe to Mongolia and China. Over the past 5000 years, these flat grasslands were thought to be the route for the ebb and flow of migrant humans, their horses, and their languages. de Barros Damgaard et al. probed whole-genome sequences from the remains of 74 indi...

Understanding the physiology and genetics of human hypoxia tolerance has important medical implications, but this phenomenon has thus far only been investigated in high-altitude human populations. Another system, yet to be explored, is humans who engage in breath-hold diving. The indigenous Bajau people (“Sea Nomads”) of Southeast Asia live a subsi...

Using novel advances in computational chemistry, we demonstrate that the set of 20 genetically encoded amino acids, used nearly universally to construct all coded terrestrial proteins, has been highly influenced by natural selection. We defined an adaptive set of amino acids as one whose members thoroughly cover relevant physico-chemical properties...

We propose a metric which can be used to compute the amount of heritable variation enabled by a given dynamical system. A distribution of selection pressures is used such that each pressure selects a particular fixed point via competitive exclusion in order to determine the corresponding distribution of potential fixed points in the population dyna...

Multidisciplinary consensus indicates that half of the genetically amino acids are likely to have been available on the prebiotic earth, which implies certain adaptive expectations for the relationship between those amino acids and later additions to the genetic code. Chemistry space a concept that translates molecules to corresponding points in mu...

Ribosomal tag libraries based on DNA and RNA in coral reef sediment from Hawaii show the microbial community to be dominated by the bacterial phyla Proteobacteria, Firmicutes and Actinobacteria, the archaeal order Nitrosopumilales and the uncultivated divisions Marine Group III (Euryarchaeota) and Marine Benthic Group C (Crenarchaeota). Operational...

In order to investigate a possible correlation between the Edot of a pulsar and the presence of giant pulses, we made observations of pulsars J1930+1852, B1951+32 and J1913+1011 using the WAPP (Wideband Arecibo Pulsar Processor) at the Arecibo Observatory. We chose these pulsars because they possess high Edots, a characteristic shared by the Crab P...