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I am an evolutionary biologist in Dmitri Petrov's lab at Stanford. The focus of my research lies in understanding the role of adaptation in molecular evolution, which I address through theory and the analysis of population genomic data.
Recent years have brought about fundamental changes in our understanding of evolutionary dynamics, as it is becoming increasingly clear that adaptation plays a much more dominant role in molecular evolution than previously thought. My studies and those of others have provided diverse lines of evidence that molecular adaptation is at times pervasive, often rapid, and frequently involves mutations of large selective effects.
In the light of these findings many key assumptions of evolutionary theory may need to be reconsidered and the ramifications are not yet forseeable. It is incredibly exciting to be part of this revolution in our understanding of how evolution works.
Contact
Philipp W. Messer
Department of Biology
Stanford University
371 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305-5020
phone: (+1) 650-736-2249
email: messer[at]stanford.edu