Nordborg’s
Lab Professor’s workplace is where
the theoretical and experimental meet
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Understanding the extent and nature of variation in humans—or plants for that matter—is at the heart of the scientific investigations led by USC College geneticist Magnus Nordborg. |
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“I focus on the genetic bases of adaptation,” says Nordborg, assistant professor of biological sciences and a key member of the Center for Computational and Experimental Genomics. |
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Genetic variation, he explains, lies at the core of evolutionary adaptation. Adaptive traits—which stem from small variations in genes that are passed on to an offspring—help an organism to survive or reproduce. Tracking how adaptive, complex traits are inherited will provide scientists with the closest view yet of the actual mechanisms of evolution at work. |
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“I’m very interested in doing things efficiently,” he says. “I care about questions, and when you’ve got a good question you go and do what you need to do to find the answer. I’m very mathematical for a biologist, but I am a biologist.” |
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A Swede with a finely developed sense of design—indeed nothing seems out of place in his well-scrubbed lab and IKEA-appointed office—Nordborg first came to the United States to attend graduate school at Stanford University. There he trained as a population geneticist, absorbing both classical genetics, and cutting-edge mathematics and molecular biology. His thesis work brought him closer to bioinformatics, as he applied sophisticated math and computer tools to questions of population genetics.
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That training has served him well at the College, where he works closely with computational biologists, combining the theoretical with the experimental in his own lab. |
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“Most individuals within a species are 99-percent alike genetically,” he says. But very small genetic variations are created by random mutations in DNA and through the shuffling of parental genetic material during the cell division that produces sperm and egg cells. These can give rise to the differences we recognize in each other—from fallen arches to freckles, propensity for diseases like diabetes or osteoporosis, and even the complex personality traits that make us each an individual. |
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As a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, Nordborg worked with plant geneticists studying the genetic roots of the variations seen in the mustard weed Arabidopsis thaliana, the most-studied model organism of plant gene researchers. |
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Nordborg works with the Chicago group to create a database of DNA sequence variation found in each of some 96 strains of Arabidopsis. The team collected the strains of the plant from around the world, many of which have special adaptive traits, such as an early flowering time, an ability to grow in the cold or survive in drought-like conditions. |
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Nordborg’s lab has been busy searching the DNA sequences for genetic variations as small as a single misspelled DNA letter, called a single nucleotide polymorphism or SNP. The team will search for about 20,000 SNPs in all. |
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The project represents the first attempt to measure genetic variation across an entire genome and tests a method that may one day be applied to many kinds of organisms. |
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