Takahiro Maruki
Postdoctoral Research Associate
tmaruki(at)indiana.edu
(812)856-0115
Ph.D. in Biology, Arizona State University, 2011
Research
I investigate mechanisms of evolution by building mathematical models of evolutionary processes and analyzing empirical data. In particular, I am interested in the following topics:
1. Pattern in the genomic variation shaped by interacting forces of natural selection and random genetic drift
2. Role of the geographic structure of a population in shaping the genomic variation of an organism
3. Role of recombination in shaping the genomic variation of an organism
I study these topics with genomic polymorphism data of Daphnia in my postdoctoral researches. Genetic characteristics found in Daphnia, including strong population structure and existence of sexual and asexual individuals, provide exciting opportunities to investigate the topics. In order to analyze genomic data of an organism generated by the inherently error-prone genomic sequencing, I develop mathematical methods for estimating population parameters, including the population differentiation measure FST and the linkage disequilibrium coefficient D, from genomic polymorphism data under the presence of erroneous sequence reads.
Publications:
Kim, Y., and Maruki, T., (2011) Hitchhiking effect of a beneficial mutation spreading in
a subdivided population. Genetics 189: 213-226
Maruki, T., Kumar, S. and Kim, Y., Purifying selection modulates the estimates of
population differentiation and confounds genome-wide comparisons across
single nucleotide polymorphisms. (in revision)