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The Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Science
Carmel Liran
Prof. Liran Carmel
Ancient DNA & Human Evolution
Genetics
Personal Information
Research Interests
The ability to sequence DNA from bones and teeth opened the opportunity to read the genetic makeup of ancient populations like Neanderthals and Mammoths. The work in my lab focuses in identifying the genetic changes that made us humans, in studying the epigenetics of ancient populations, and in general understanding evolutionary and historical processes.
Dissertation Topics
Our lab deals with a host of topics in the general fields of molecular evolution and genetics. Among the topics that are currently pursued are:
- Human evolution. Recent advances in ancient DNA sequencing yielded genomes (either shotgun sequences with varying degrees of coverage, or SNP arrays) of many ancient anatomically modern humans, as well as of Neanderthals and Denisovans. This open unique opportunities to study the genetic aspects of the very recent lag of our own evolution.
- Paleo-epigenetics. We developed a technique to reconstruct full DNA methylation maps from high-coverage ancient genomes, and use it to study evolutionary changes in gene regulation, ancient environments and phenotypic adaptations.
- Paleo-genetics. We study the genetic structure of ancient populations in Israel.
- RNA biology. We are studying many aspects of RNA biology, including splicing, nonsense-mediated decay, 3'-end processing, and circular RNAs.
- Multivariate data analysis. My lab is also active in some fields of applied mathematics: multivariate analysis, statistical pattern recognition, data visualization, and machine learning.
