GeoGenetics > Research > Research groups > Orlando Group

Research group: The Orlando Group

Our previous research has addressed a wide range of evolutionary questions. They have focused on involving ancient DNA (aDNA), phylogenetic and serial coalescent approaches to follow the diversity dynamics of several mammal species and populations over the last 50.000 years

Using these data we have been able to estimate the timing of speciation/extinction of emblematic extinct species (eg. cave bears, woolly rhinos). We have also been able to revise the phylogenetic/taxonomic relationships of many extinct groups, especially among extinct equids.

How much major palaeo-environmental changes, such as the Last Glacial Maximum, have shaped the geographic structure and demographic profile of Megafauna populations in Europe has been a recurrent theme in our research. Our work has focused on human evolution as well, with special interest in the relationships with our closest relatives, ie. the Neandertals.

3rd generation sequencing

On-going research projects propose innovative molecular approaches as well as new informatic tools designed for aDNA data analysis. More specifically, we aim at better characterizing the biochemistry of aDNA damages in order to develop enzymatic-based methods.

These will both improve the accuracy and efficiency of Next-Generation Sequencing technologies. In addition, new genomic pipelines (for 3rd generation sequencing), serial-coalescent tools and fast strategies for assigning metagenomic reads are currently under development. These approaches are used to address a variety of ecological and anthropological questions, and to solve long-standing phylogenetic hypotheses.

The lab officially opened on 1. April 2010 and benefits from strong connections with Eske Willerslev and Tom Gilbert's research groups.

Recent publications

Mourier T, Ho S, Gilbert MTP, Willerslev E, Orlando L. (2012):

Statistical guidelines for detecting past population shifts using ancient DNA. Mol Biol Evol, in press (doi: 10.1093/molbev/mss094).

Lorenzen ED*, Nogués-Bravo D*, Orlando L*, Weinstock J*, Binladen J*, Marske KA*, Ugan A, Borregaard MK, Gilbert MT, Nielsen R, Ho SY, Goebel T, Graf KE, Byers D, Stenderup JT, Rasmussen M, Campos PF, Leonard JA, Koepfli KP, Froese D, Zazula G, Stafford TW Jr, Aaris-Sørensen K, Batra P, Haywood AM, Singarayer JS, Valdes PJ, Boeskorov G, Burns JA, Davydov SP, Haile J, Jenkins DL, Kosintsev P, Kuznetsova T, Lai X, Martin LD, McDonald HG, Mol D, Meldgaard M, Munch K, Stephan E, Sablin M, Sommer RS, Sipko T, Scott E, Suchard MA, Tikhonov A, Willerslev R, Wayne RK, Cooper A, Hofreiter M, Sher A, Shapiro B, Rahbek C, Willerslev E. 2011:

Species-specific responses of Late Quaternary magefauna to climate and humans. Nature 479:359-64.
* contributed equally

Orlando L, Ginolhac A, Raghavan M, Vilstrup J, Rasmussen M, Magnussen K, Steinmann K, Kapranov P, Thompson JF, Zazula G, Froese D, Moltke I, Shapiro B, Hofreiter M, Al-Rasheid KA, Gilbert MT, Willerslev E.:

True single-molecule DNA sequencing of a Pleistocene horse bone. Genome Res. 2011, 21:1705-19

Ginolhac A, Rasmussen M, Gilbert MTP, Willerslev E, Orlando L.:

mapDamage: testing for damage patterns in ancient DNA sequences. Bioinformatics. 2011, 27:2153-5

Head of the group is Ludovic Orlando.