My area of specialization is Anthropological Genetics. I joined Stanford's Department of Anthropology (now Department of Anthropological Sciences) as an Assistant Professor in January of 1998, and received an additional appointment to the Department of Genetics in 1999. I returned to campus having received a B.S. degree through Stanford's Mathematical Sciences Program in 1984, and a Ph.D. degree through Stanford's Department of Genetics in 1994. Following my undergraduate program I spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer teaching at a community school near the Kenyan coast. I remain particularly interested in the cultural and genetic diversity of East Africa. My doctoral dissertation was entitled "Inferring Human Evolutionary History from Mitochondrial DNA Sequences and Nuclear DNA Allele Frequencies". After receiving my Ph.D. I conducted postdoctoral research in the Integrative Biology Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

The current focus of my research group is upon the highly informative but difficult to detect biological variation found at the level of DNA. While not easily observed, DNA variation stores a great deal of information regarding the population processes of human history, as well as the evolution of our morphology, physiology, and behavior. We are currently surveying the maternally and paternally inherited genetic variation of a set of linguistically diverse peoples of Tanzania, addressing questions regarding the origins of our species, linguistic evolution, and the history of the migration in East Africa. We are also developing a new set of genetic systems; we predict that these will be informative regarding major human migrations and population bottlenecks throughout the last 100,000 years of human history.

More broadly speaking, my areas of interest include: the origins of modern humans; comparisons of genetic and linguistic variation among human populations; ethical issues regarding human genetics; phenotype and the interactions among genotype, environment, and culture; biology and concepts of race; the extent to which genetic data can reveal details of human history; the origins of and relationships among the peoples of East Africa; the development of statistical tools for analyzing a variety of human population genetic data; and, comparisons of the genetic variation of ancient and living peoples.

Mountain, J.L., Knight, A., Miller, A., Jobin, M., Gignoux, C., Lin, A.A., Underhill, P.A. SNPSTRs: Informative, rapid,autosomal haplotypic marker systems for inferring population history Genome Research (in press).

Mountain, J.L. Human Evolutionary Genetics. In N. J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes (editors) 2001 International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences. Pergamon, Oxford. pp. 6984-6990. www.iesbs.com.

Lee, S. S-J., Mountain, J. L., Koenig, B. A. The meanings of "race" in the new genomics: Implications for health disparities research. (2001) Yale Journal of Health Policy and Law I: 33-75.

Wiehe, T., Mountain, J.L., Parham, P., and Slatkin, M. Inference of the relative roles of recombination and gene conversion in the generation of HLA class I diversity. (2000), Genetical Research, 75: 61-73.

Wagner, T.M., Hirtenlehner, K., Shen, P., Moeslinger, R., Muhr, D., Fleishmann, E., Concin, H., Doeller, W., Haid, A., Lang, A.H., Mayer, P., Petru, E., Ropp, E., Langbauer, G., Kubista, E., Scheiner, O., Underhill, P., Mountain, J., Stierer, M., Zielinski, C., Oefner, P. (1999) Global sequence diversity of BRCA2: analysis of 71 breast cancer families and 95 control individuals of worldwide populations. Human Molecular Genetics, 8:413-423.

Nielsen, R., Mountain, J.L., Huelsenbeck, J.P. and Slatkin, M. (1998) Maximum likelihood estimation of population divergence times and population phylogenies in models without mutation: applications to human RFLP data. Evolution, 52:669-677.

Mountain, J.L. (1998) Molecular evolution and modern human origins. Evolutionary Anthropology, 7:21-37.

Mountain, J.L. and Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1997) Multilocus genotypes, a tree of individuals, and h uman evolutionary history. Am. J. Hum. Genet., 61:705-718.

Rannala, B. and Mountain, J.L. (1997) Detecting immigration by using multilocus genotypes. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94:9197-9201.

Mountain, J.L., Hebert, J.M., Bhattacharyya, S., Underhill, P., Ottolenghi, C., Gadgil, M., Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1995) Reply to Govindaraju. Am. J. Hum.Genet., 57:1246-1247.

Mountain, J.L., Hebert, J.M., Bhattacharyya, S ., Underhill, P., Ottolenghi, C., Gadgil, M., Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1995) Demographic history of India and mitochondrial DNA sequence diversity. Am. J. Hum.Genet., 56:979-992.

Piazza, A., Rendine, S., Menozzi, P., Mountain, J. and Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1995) Genetics and the origin of European languages. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 92:5836-5840.

Poloni, E. S., Excoffier, L., Mountain, J. L., Langaney, A., Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1995) Nucle ar DNA polymorphism in a Mandenka population from Senegal: comparison with eight other human populations. Ann. Hum. Genet., 59:43-61.

Lin, A.A., Hebert, J.M., Mountain, J.L., Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1994) Comparison of 79 D NA polymorphisms tested in Australians, Japanese, and Papua New Guineans with those of five other human populations. Gene Geography, 8:191-214.

Mountain, J.L. (1994) Inferring human evolutionary history from mitochondrial DNA sequences and nuclear DNA allele frequencies. Ph.D. Thesis, Stanford University.

Mountain, J.L. and Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1994) Inference of human evolution through cladistic analysis of nuclear DNA restriction polymor phisms. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 91:6515-6519.

Kurth, J.H., Mountain, J.L., Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1993). Subclustering of human immunoglobulin k light chain variable region genes. Genomics, 16:69-77.

Mountain, J.L., Lin, A.A., Bowcock, A.M., & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1992). Evolution of modern humans: evidence from nuclear DNA polymorphisms. Phil. Trans. Royal Society, Series B, 337:159-165.

Minch, E., Mountain, J.L., & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1992). Coevolution of genes and languages revisited. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 89:5620-5624.

Mountain, J.L., Wang, W. S.-Y., Du, R., Yuan, Y., & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1992). Congruence of genetic and linguistic evolution in China. J. Chinese Ling., 20:315-330.

Du, R., Yuan, Y., Hwang, J., Mountain, J., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1992). Chinese surnames and the genetic differences be tween north and south China. J. Chinese Ling., Monograph no. 5, 1-93.

Hallmayer, J., Mountain, J., Ritvo, E., Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., & Ciaranello, R. (1991). A linkage study of familial infantile autism (Abstract). Proceedings of Second World Congress on Psychiatric Genetics, 50-51.

Mountain, J.L., & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1991). Relationships among living human populations determined from classical and DNA polymorphisms, in Unity of Evolutionary Biology, College Park, MD: Dioscorides Press, 458-465.

Bowcock, A.M., Hebert, J.M., Mountain, J.L., Kidd, J.R., Rogers, J., Kidd, K.K., & Cavalli-Sforza, L.L. (1991). Study of an additional 58 DNA markers in five human populations from four continents.Gene Geography, 5:151-173.

Bowcock, A. M., Kidd, J.R., Mountain, J.L., Hebert, J. M., Carotenuto, L., Kidd, K.K., & Cavalli-Sforza, L. L. (1991). Drift, admixture, and selection in human evolution: A study with DNA polymorphisms. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 88:839-843.

Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., Piazza, A., Menozzi, P., & Mountain, J. (1988). Reconstruction of human evolution: Bringing together genetic, archaeological, and linguistic data. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA, 85, 6002-6006.

Helen Donis-Keller Laboratory Manual
Table of Standard Genetic Code
Molecular Biogeography and Genetic Structure of Domesticated Cattle
Likelihood Theory for Phylogenetics
SciSearch. at LANL
Ethnologue, 13th edition, 1996
Human Genome Diversity Project
Index of Human Genome News Articles by Subject
Model Ethical Protocol
Statement on the Principled Conduct of Genetics Research
mtDNA D-loop collection
Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Online
Cancer and Immunogenetics Laboratory Home Page
Cytogenetics