News

January, 2016 – Congrats to Meagan on obtaining multiple grants and fellowships!

  • The Leakey Foundation Dissertation Grant
    for “Effect of Diet and Parasites on the Gut Metagenomics of Environmentally Diverse Africans”
    Leakey Foundation Grantee Spotlight
  • National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant
    for "Gut Microbiomes of Cameroon Hunter-Gatherers: Roles of Diet and Helminths”
  • Lewis and Clark Exploration for Fund for Exploration and Field Research
    for “Gut Microbiomes of Cameroon Hunter-Gatherers: Roles of Diet and Helminths”
  • University of Pennsylvania Teece Fellowship Stipend for Research (5k)
    for “Gut Microbiomes of Cameroon Hunter-Gatherers: Roles of Diet and Helminths”

July, 2015 – Matt Hansen won the postdoctoral poster award at the 2015 meeting of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution, held this year in Vienna. Matt's poster was entitled "Anthropometric and cardiovascular trait variation among sub-Saharan African populations: the role of gender, subsistence, and genetic ancestry."

June, 2015 – Congratulations to Meagan for getting an NSF Dissertation Improvement grant, Penn Dissertation Research Fellowship and a Lewis and Clark Foundation grant to fund her research on microbiome diversity in Africa.  Also, congrats to Sameer Soi on successfully defending his PhD.

April 2015 – "Why does Africa have so many languages?" In The Christian Science Monitor, Sarah Tishkoff commented on how Africa's high levels of genetic diversity relate to the continent's linguistic heterogeneity.
Link to article

September 2014 - "Global population-specific variation in miRNA associated with cancer risk and clinical biomarkers" authored by Renata Rawlings-Goss, Michael Campbell, and Sarah Tishkoff was published in the journal BMC Medical Genomics.
PubMed link
PennNews Article
Interview with Renata Rawlings-Goss by MedicalResearch.com

Congratulations to Alessia Ranciaro for her American Journal of Human Genetics article entitled "Genetic origins of lactase persistence and the spread of pastoralism in Africa" published in the March 12, 2014 edition.
PubMed link
Penn News article

Michael Campbell published "Evolution of functionally diverse alleles associated with PTC bitter taste sensitivity in Africa" in Molecular Biology and Evolution in February 2014
PubMed link
PennMedicine press release

September 2013 - The African Diaspora: Integrating Culture, Genomics, and History symposium was hosted by The Smithsonian and the National Human Genome Research Institute. The story continues from conversations started at the symposium: "Where is anyone from, really?" and "Has DNA testing made genealogy simpler or more complex?"
Link to the article
Video from the symposium

Cell cover 2012Cell published "Evolutionary history and adaptation from high-coverage whole-genome sequences of diverse African hunter-gatherers" by Joe Lachance and featured it on August 3, 2012 cover.
Article
Press release