Leading genome sequencer to deliver public lecture

As part of the University of Western Australia’s (UWA) Raine Visiting Professor Lecture Series, Stephan Schuster is this week presenting a talk titled ‘How ethnicity matters for medical genomics’.

Schuster, a professor of genetics at Nanyang Technical University, Singapore, became famous around the world when he completed the genome of the woolly mammoth thousands of years after it had walked the Earth. The world leader in DNA sequencing was able to recreate the prehistoric mammal’s DNA from a ball of hair that had been buried under ice in Siberia.

Schuster hopes to apply his knowledge to at least seven species living at the brink of extinction, as the woolly mammoth itself was once. He has already sequenced the genomes of the polar bear and the zebrafish and is helping with work on the face cancer that is driving the Tasmanian Devil to extinction.

Schuster’s presentation will address issues of genome-based disease associations within study cohorts of major ethnic groups. In addition, the effect of recent exponential population growth on the generation of novel alleles will be investigated, as well as the historical human census sizes of the last 200,000 years.

The Raine Lecture will be held at the Harry Perkins Institute of Medical Research at noon on 25 September. A light lunch will be served after the lecture.

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