Laurits Skov’s research group studies the history of humans such as ourselves (homo sapiens), Neanderthals and Denisovans. While Neanderthals and Denisovans are now extinct part of their DNA still lives on in our genomes due to introgression. By reconstructing the genomes of these extinct archaic humans we can answer questions such as: How many archaic humans contributed to our genomes? How many times did we encounter them and how long did we coexist? When did they go extinct? How do their genes affect us today? Are there parts of our genomes that are uniquely human? Your task will be to develop new computational methods to study archaic introgression and applying them to the largest dataset of present-day human genomes available (>1.1 million people). The goal is to establish how many archaic human groups contributed to our genomes. Your task is to infer key parameters of the archaic human evolutionary history such as mutation rate, generation time, admixture history with other archaic humans, historic population size and selective forces which shaped their genome. You will investigate how many times they encountered modern humans, how long they coexisted with modern humans and where they interacted with modern humans. Further since many biobanks how medical records associated with them this project provides a unique opportunity to study the effect of archaic introgression on human health and phenotypes.
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