Abt. Hiller

Vergleichende Genomik

Evolution has led to an incredible diversity of phenotypes in all major species clades, exemplified by mammals like bats that fly or dolphins that live their entire life in the water. Phenotypic differences between species are due to differences in their genome. Today, hundreds of animals have sequenced genomes, including more than 400 mammals and 400 birds. These sequenced genomes provide an unprecedented opportunity to discover which genomic changes underlie particular phenotypic changes between species, which is the overarching scientific question we address in the lab. Thus, we wish to contribute to our understanding how nature's incredible diversity evolved. Our focus is here explicitly on differences between species and not differences within a species, though many of our comparative methods will also work on genomes of individuals or strains of the same species.


Read more on our lab web pages at https://tbg.senckenberg.de/hillerlab/