SMBE Satellite Workshop on the Genetics of Admixed Populations: May 18-20, 2016 San Antonio, TX

The Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) satellite workshop, Genetics of Admixed Populations, will be held in San Antonio, TX May 18-20, 2016.

Early registration deadline is February 15, 2016, with a final registration deadline of March 15, 2016. A limited number of travel awards are available through SMBE and the American Association of Anthropological Genetics (AAAG).

Workshop Details:
Studies of admixed populations and the admixture process touch on topics central to evolutionary and molecular biology, including the dynamics of gene flow and hybridization, population expansions, and adaptation. Admixed populations have been leveraged to detect disease and phenotypic associations, elucidate mechanisms and timescales of speciation, and infer regions under selection. Acting as a natural experiment, admixed populations provide insight into unique adaptations of their parental populations, and evolutionary processes in related populations more generally. Admixture is also intimately linked with the recombination process, which shuffles segments of different ancestry, and is proven to vary in rate and location based on ancestry.

The primary goal of this satellite meeting is to emphasize the common theoretical and empirical underpinnings of the study of admixed human populations with the study of hybridization in other animals and even plants, opening up methods and study design from a specific organism to a wider audience. We hope to bridge theoretical and data-driven approaches, starting a discussion on the suitability of methods to various systems and open questions that may be better resolved using an interdisciplinary approach, as well as considering ethical concerns associated with these studies.

Workshop sessions include:
Admixture as a dynamic process
Novel Methods to Untangle Admixture
Empirical Studies of Population History
Admixture as a Mechanism for and Against Speciation
Admixture and Selection: Phenotypic and Medical Implications
Panel Discussion: Ethical considerations and Sampling Schemes