Cornejo Lab

School of Biological Sciences, WSU

News

02/13/2014  Our study of an ancient genome of a boy of the Clovis complex gives us some first sight of the genetic roots of the first people to populate the Americas. Take a look at it in Nature. Go Morten! Great response from the international press: BBC, NPR, WSU news, among others.


Political News: I am deeply concern about the situation in my home country Venezuela. I want to use my website to rise concern about how the Venezuelan government is allowing the killing and abuses against students rightfully demanding improvements to education, health and security in the country. Please spread the voice and join us in our demands.

The Palouse, our new home (photo: OC, 2013)

 

About the Lab

Contact Information

Washington State University

School of Biological Sciences

PO Box 644236

Eastlick Hall 395

Pullman, WA. 99164-4236

e-mail: omar.cornejo(at)wsu.edu

Phone: +1-509-335-0179

Recent Publications

The research in our lab is aimed to understand basic evolutionary processes that shape genetic variation in populations, and contribute to their adaptive evolution. We are particularly interested in the evolution of microorganisms (but not limited to them), and we combine population genetics/genomics analyses, phylogenetics, simple mathematical models and experimental work to address fundamental questions in their ecology and evolution. You can learn more about what we do in our lab in the Research section. Go ahead and visit it, don’t be shy.


The increased availability of next generation sequencing has opened an incredible opportunity to ask questions about the demographic history and the genetic basis of adaptive evolution in microbes.  Some of the questions addressed in our lab are: i) Can we infer from retrospective genomic analyses the demographic history of (micro)organisms adn identify candidate genes that might be involved in their adaptation to the current niche (either host or environment)?  ii) What ecological and evolutionary scenarios can explain the maintenance of toxic agents that kill the organisms that produce them?  iii) What are the genetic bases of disease susceptibility? iv) What are the genetic basis of phenotypic variation in complex traits like disease susceptibility or the ability to produce offspring are questions that present common challenges in organisms with very distinct genomic architectures like Theobroma cacao (chocolate plants) or humans?