Cultural genomics: Understanding gene-culture coevolution from the molecular evolution perspective.

Stream leader: Chuansheng Chen

In this stream, I will introduce the basic concepts about human evolution, molecular approach to recent natural selection, data sets such as the HapMap and 1000 Genomes Projects and the Beijing Genes-Brain-Behavior Project, and ways to navigate, download, and analyze the data. Participants can select particular genes to examine their evolutionary history and current behavioral correlates.

Key readings:

Introductory (i.e., easy-to-read, warm-up) pieces:

Dewsbury, D. A. (2009). Charles Darwin and psychology at the bicentennial and sesquicentennial. American Psychologist, 64, 67-74.

Through this brief reading, we pay our homage to one of the greatest minds in science.

National Institute of General Medical Sciences. (2006). The new genetics.

This reading should provide you with basic knowledge about genetics. Depending on your background knowledge of this field, you can decide how much of a refresher you will need.

Shreeve. James(March 2006). The greatest journey: the genes of people today tell of our ancestors' trek out of Africa to the far corners of the globe.National Geographic, 209: p60(10).www3.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/atlas.html.

This piece introduces the idea of human dispersal and its genetic traces. I apologize for not having the colorful version, only the text.

Gibbons, A. (2010). Tracing evolution’s recent fingerprints. Science, August, 740-742.

This piece introduces the notion of recent human evolution from molecular perspective.

Pritchard, J. K. (October, 2010). How we are evolving. Scientific American.

Scientific and empirical (i.e., more technical) reports and reviews:

Wang, E., Kodama, G., Baldi, P., & Moyzis, R. (2006). Global landscape of recent inferred Darwinian selection for Homo sapiens. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 103, 135-140.

This piece is the first systematic examination of genetic fingerprints of recent human evolution. Parts of it will be very technical.

Hawks, J., Wang, E. T., Cocharen, G. M., Harpending, H., & Moyzis, R. K. (2007). Recent acceleration of human adaptive evolution. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences, 104, 20753-20758.

This piece pushes further into the recency of human evolution at the molecular level and bravely speculates on the influence of broad cultural factors such as the advent of agriculture.

Fu, W., & Akey, J.M. (2013). Selection and adaption in the human genome. Annual Reviews of Genomics and Human Genetics, 14, 467-489.

This is one of three most recent reviews of molecular evidence for recent human evolution. The other two were by Sabbetti’s group and Tischkoff’s group. They are very similar in their main theme and related evidence.

Abecasis, G. R., Altshuler, D., Auton, A., Brooks, L. D., Durbin, R. M., Gibbs, R. A., . . . McVean, G. A. (2012). An integrated map of genetic variation from 1,092 human genomes. Nature, 491(7422), 56-65. doi: 10.1038/nature11632

This article discusses the 1000 genomes project.

Chen, Chuansheng, Moyzis, R.K., Lei, X., Chen, Chunhui, & Dong,Q. (in press). The “encultured” genome: Molecular evidence for recent divergent evolution in human neurotransmitter genes. In J. Chiao, Li, S., Seligman, R., & Turner, R. (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Neuroscience. New York: Oxford University Press.

In this chapter, we provide an overview of cultural genomics.

Relevant videos:

My brief statement about culture as a driving force of molecular evolution:

Mark Daly’s primer on genetic variations, linkage disequiliquium, HapMap, etc.

Introduction to the 1000 genomes project:

Relevant websites:

The International HapMap Project:

The 1000 Genomes Project:

The UC Santa Cruz gene browser: