Anne Goriely is an Associate Professor of Human Genetics at the Radcliffe Department of Medicine. Her award will support a research programme focusing on a process called selfish selection, promoting clonal expansion of pathogenic de novo mutations in human testes/male germline. De novo mutations are widely thought to occur randomly. However, the group has challenged this assumption by showing that so-called selfish mutations are able to hijack the cellular control of male germline stem cells in which they arise, leading to their preferential transmission to the next generation. The Goriely group will use state-of-the-art technology to assess the significance of selfish selection for human disease and genome evolution.
Many congratulation to Prof Goriely.