Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics

[NNadir]

Man, if I had the money and the time, it would be really, really, really cool to attend this event:

Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics

The prospectus:

Symposium Overview
Combining genome-wide data from ancient and modern populations opens new windows into the past. Population-scale sequencing projects investigating past and present human diversity have already provided us with extraordinary insights into patterns of human variation and mobility through time and space. The available dataset of genome-wide data from modern humans has approximately tripled since the first edition of ‘Reconstructing the human past: using ancient and modern genomics’ in 2019, and the ability to carry out further large-scale studies on the scale of whole cemeteries and deeply sampled time transects makes it now possible to ask and answer questions that were simply impossible to address before.

The integration of archaeological evidence and historical records with genomic data elucidates aspects of human history and the cultural evolution of past societies. Genome-wide data from archaic human remains, such as Neandertals and Denisovans, allows to investigate human evolution in action and to provide direct insights into genetic changes that define our own lineage. The potential of ancient DNA data to reconstruct genomic variation of human-associated animals and plants to understand the process of domestication and their evolutionary trajectory is equally promising to such studies in humans.

Furthermore, the reconstruction of ancient pathogen genomes and metagenomic analysis of the oral and gut microbiomes provides us with molecular fossils to study microbial evolution through time. This meeting will involve scientists from population genetics, bioinformatics, microbiology, anthropology, archaeology and history and will strengthen future interactions in this young research field that is already changing the way we think about our past and will shape how we study genetic variation in the future.

Session Topics
Genomic analyses of our closest living and extinct relatives
Detecting patterns of natural selection
Reconstructing the genetic history of human populations
Combining genetics and historical evidence
Genetic history of domestication
Evolution of human pathogens and our microbiome
Methods for improving the analysis of ancient genomic data

It would be a dream to go, but I'd have no professional justification.

There's so much to learn; so little time...

[exboyfil]

1. I find it interesting that there is a PhD Virtual Student

at 125 Euros. I wonder if they would get any interest in a passive (just watching) general public option. I have a strong interest in exobiology, and I plan to study it on an informal basis once I retire from mechanical engineering (5 to 8 years away). I might not have learned enough genetics to this point to understand the papers though.

[Warpy]

2. The problem with deep time is that the DNA is just no longer there

They've found a fossil with both homonin and ape characteristics that dates from 5.8 million to 6.1 million years ago, quite possibly the common ancestor of chimpanzees and what eventually turned into us. It would be great to sequence that DNA, but it is no longer there.

We can't even run the DNA of the Naledi people, a homonin species closely related to H. erectus that was contemporary with the first modern humans 230,000 years ago, the cave they used for burial tended to destroy all DNA traces. And yes, I said burial, it was a cemetery population of the young and the old with few people in their mid 20s through 30s represented.

This field is just beginning. While they've mapped our genome, they're still not certain what most of it actually does--what was once dismissed as "junk DMA" has been found to act with known sequences in amazing ways.

Eventually we might be able to recover enough DNA from soils around fossils to learn something more about these prototype humans.

I love this stuff. I was just born about 50 years too early to do much participation. I just hope we don't blow ourselves up before we answer some of the many questions out there.

[stopdiggin]

3. DNA science and genetics (combined with data crunching) - are the 'new frontier'

there is a whole universe to be discovered (as the OP tries to point to) - both macro and micro - intraspecies, biointeraction, ecological impacts, population impacts, interactive pathogens and evolution ... Mega events, explosions, extinctions and die-offs - clear on down to molecular chemistry.

We're leapfrogging what science has been for 200 years (okay 100 years) - leaving it utterly behind - and only just getting started.