Ancient Environmental Genomics: Retrieving the Whole Past from Paleosoil

This is a hybrid event which will take place in Room 612, 6th floor of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, and also online via Zoom. Registration for the Zoom event is via the booking link above.

Abstract

Ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) refers to the ancient DNA molecules preserved in sediments and other environmental samples. It was initially developed for detecting target species and reconstructing the organismal assemblages of certain taxonomic groups (such as vascular plant), as a supplement for micro- and macro-fossils. With repaid technique advances in the past few years, ancient eDNA has been more and more broadly applied in reconstructing the holistic ecosystem evolution and succession, the population histories of migration, evolution, and gene exchanges of human and other key species, and the map of pathogen evolution and transmission. In this presentation, Dr Yucheng Wang will introduce the history, ongoing efforts, and the potential future perspectives of ancient eDNA along with case studies.

About the Speaker

Dr Yucheng Wang is a postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, and a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for GeoGenetics, University of Copenhagen. Yucheng is an evolutionary bio-ecologist interested in applying ancient environmental DNA (eDNA) to understand how ecosystems and species respond and adapt to variable climate, environment, and human activities. His work involves using and developing eDNA metabarcoding, ddPCR, shotgun metagenomics, and target genome capturing, both in wet-lab and bioinformatics, to reconstruct the ecological evolutions, successions, and interactions, as well as the domesticating and evolutionary histories of key species. During his PhD, Yucheng led the first large-scale eDNA metagenomics study in which the complex evolutionary history of the circumpolar ecosystems in the past 50,000 years was reconstructed.

All welcome!