The Bigham Lab for Anthropological Genomics is focused on understanding human genetic adaptation to environmental pressures and how these adaptations affect the range of modern human phenotypic diversity. A deeper understanding of patterns of human genetic variation, their origins, and the evolutionary forces that maintain them will be important for identifying genetic factors that influence human phenotypes, including normal morphological variation and disease related traits. Furthermore, characterizing adaptive alleles subject to recent positive natural selection will contribute to our understanding of the genetic architecture of adaptive human phenotypes, elucidate the molecular basis of adaptive change, and ultimately identify genes that play a role in disease susceptibility.

News

NSF Award

We are excited to share that our lab along with collaborators at Syracuse University and Mount Royal University have been awarded NSF funding to study Nepali Sherpa adaptations to high […]

Contact

Dr. Abby Bigham
awbigham@ucla.edu
310-825-3914