Harnessing ancient DNA information content to infer evolutionary histories

DNA from ancient remains (aDNA) provides a direct window into our past and has revolutionized our understanding of migratory patterns in humans (ref 1) and other animals (2,3). However, major challenges such as poor data quality still prevent us from fully exploiting the enormous potential of aDNA. In particular, current methods ignore correlations among neighboring genetic markers, even though this would substantially increase our power to infer demographic histories. This project will develop and apply novel statistical methods for low-quality aDNA, in order to extract previously unobtainable, yet crucial, information about the evolutionary histories of humans and their domestic animals.