Örjan Carlborg

I am a Computational Geneticist with a particular interest in adaptation. Adaptation is the process where the genetics of an organism is changed in order to be fitter in a given environment. On a short time-scale, adaptation is a way for a species to cope with changing life-conditions. To understand the genetics underlying such changes, I study how plants adapt to climate-change and agricultural breeding have adapted wild plants and animals to become domestic crops and livestock. To understand more about the genetic mechanisms that contribute to these processes, I do experiments and test hypotheses in the computer. Core activities in my research are therefore both the development of new models, methods and tools to analyze experimental data, as well as analysing and interpreting data using these new approaches. The data is sometimes collected by us, but most often by others. We are now in the middle of biological data-revolution, where new ways to characterize living organisms in molecular detail are emerging at a very rapid pace. This makes it very exciting to be working in computational genetics and I already today look forward to explore what tomorrows data will tell us about the adaptive processes that have happened in the past!