Category Archives: Genetics

Upcoming AAA meetings

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

I apologize for my blog silence of late. It has been a busy few weeks of writing. Later this week I am headed to the AAA meetings in San Francisco, however, and I will try to provide some updates on … Continue reading →

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Thought of the day: “Modern” human origins

Posted on October 23, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

The first class I took that really hooked me on paleoanthropology was an undergraduate seminar on Modern Human Origins. The class was wonderful. We read a huge amount of primary literature and for whatever reason, the class, although we were … Continue reading →

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Links for a Monday morning

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Some readings from around the web to start the week… Estimating the rate of mutation and the human evolutionary clock This is a big , complex and unfolding story that I have been meaning to comment on and still hope … Continue reading →

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Population replacements and founder effects in humans

Posted on October 12, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

TREE has an article in press looking at the impact of founder events on subsequent patterns of genetic diversity. The main argument of the paper, co-authored by Waters, Fraser & Hewitt (Founder takes all: density-dependent processes structure biodiversity), is that … Continue reading →

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Fear of genomics

Posted on October 2, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

NPR (at least my local NPR affiliates) has been running a series on low-cost genomic sequencing and its potentials–good and bad–for several days now. The series has focused on a variety of issues, but has regularly come back to the … Continue reading →

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Population level extinction in human prehistory readings, part 1

Posted on September 24, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

One of my current research projects is investigating the potential impact of population level extinction in human evolutionary history. I am focusing my efforts on Late Pleistocene Europe because it is a time and a place that we have a … Continue reading →

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Speaking of genomics…

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

…I am serving as a monthly columnist for Anthropology News this year. My debut column, “Impersonal Genomics and Anthropology“, is up as of today. Check it out.

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ENCODE, CODIS and genomic law

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

Jennifer Wagner (@DNAlawyer) has a great post up on the potential legal implications of the recent ENCODE project publications. As a little background, the ENCODE project generated tremendous headlines by suggesting that a much larger portion of the genome is … Continue reading →

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A blog (and model) to follow

Posted on September 18, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

If you have not already seen it, you should check out (bookmark, subscribe to the RSS) Haldane’s Sieve. Not only does it have a great title, but it is an amazing resource for discussions of contemporary evolutionary and population genetics … Continue reading →

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Opening the genome for understanding, not simply exploration

Posted on September 5, 2012 by Adam Van Arsdale

I regularly make the distinction between information and knowledge generated from genomic studies. Information is just that, the explorative identification of genetic diversity. What nucleotide base or allelic variant is where on what chromosome in the genome? The Human Genome … Continue reading →

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