[Seminar] Genomic origins of Yaponesians, people on Japanese Archipelago by Professor Naruya Saitou

Abstract

People reached Yaponesia (Japanese Archipelago) around 40,000 years ago for the first time, and many waves of migration occurred after that time. Within this framework, we seek to decipher the genomic history of Yaponesians (people on Japanese Archipelago) through determination and comparative analyses of many modern and ancient human genomes. We also analyze genome data of animals and plants which moved to Yaponesia with Yaponesians. Temporal changes of population size are also estimated from genome sequence data by using existing methods and newly developed methods. Because we need to examine history of Yaponesians from many aspects, archeology with special reference to age estimation (dating) of artifacts and ancient organisms and linguistics with special reference to dialect analyses of Japanese and Ryukyuan languages will have collaborative fusion study with evolutionary genomics. We aim to establish new discipline, “genome history” of Yaponesians, through integration of these various analyses.

Biography

Bachelor of Science in 1979 and Master of Science in 1981 from Univ. Tokyo majoring in physical anthropology. Ph.D in 1986 from Univ. Texas at Houston. Neighbor-Joining method of Saitou and Nei (1987), whose Goole citation exceeds 53,000, is one chapter of Ph.D. thesis. Assistant Professor at Dept. Biology, Faculty of Science during 1989-1991, Associate Professor at Division of Evolutionary Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima during 1991-2002. Professor at Division of Population Genetics of the same institute from 2002 (current position). Concurrent positions: Professor, SOKENDAI and Professor, Dept. Biological Sciences, Graduate School of Science, Univ. Tokyo.