USERN Congress 2016 Alumni: Meet Prof. Francesco Cucca

USERN Key Note Lecture: UKL-01

What the genes tell us about our origins, evolutionary history and our current health

By Francesco Cucca

New DNA sequencing technology gives us the complete sequence of the genome of thousands of individuals, and is dramatically improving our understanding of the way genes function in health and disease. It has also provided a powerful tool to reconstruct the past history of humanity on an evolutionary timescale, providing information about population movements and adaptation to different environments. In humans, isolated populations have long been of particular interest because of their potential to yield unique insight into the ancestral history of a region, and because finding genes and gene variants that affect or cause disease is more feasible in some of these populations.  During my presentation, I will use the example of the isolated, ancient island population of sardinia to show the impact of genomics to investigate, in a comprehensive and unbiased manner, the bases of diseases and the origin of human populations.