Date/Time
Date(s) - 19/10/2023
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Canalization is the evolution of robustness under persistent stabilizing selection.  Human societies have experienced epidemiological transitions over the past few generations whereby the prevalence of various categories of disease has changed, many think in response to Western diet and other stresses.  I will discuss how polygenic score-by-environment interaction analyses can be used to show how susceptibility of disease differs across exposures, and provides evidence for decanalization, which is the loss of robustness.  These findings will be placed in the broader context of the highly polygenic evolution of biological traits.