Henrik Kaessmann, Associate Professor

Henrik Kaessmann received his PhD in 2001 from the University of Leipzig after working on the genetic diversity of humans and the great apes in the laboratory of Dr. Svante Pääbo at the University of Munich and subsequently at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. For his postdoctoral training, he joined the lab of Dr. Wen-Hsiung Li in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago, where he worked on the origin of human genes and gene structures. In 2003, he joined the Center for Integrative Genomics as an assistant professor and was appointed associate professor in 2007. In 2005 he was elected as an EMBO Young Investigator, and was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant in 2009. In 2010, he received the Friedrich Miescher Award from the Swiss Society for Biochemistry.

*** several postdoc and PhD student positions are available (see Open Positions link) ***

Keywords: Evolutionary genomics, molecular evolution, transcriptome evolution, origin of new genes, adaptive evolution, primates, mammals

We are interested in the functional evolution of mammalian genomes and have been focusing on the origin of new genes through the process of gene duplication. In addition to unravelling novel mechanisms pertaining to the emergence of new gene functions, our work has led to novel insights regarding the origin and evolution of mammalian sex chromosomes and other mammal-specific traits.

Henrichsen, C., Vinckenbosch, N., Zöllner, S., Chaignat, E., Pradervand, S., Frédéric Schütz, Ruedi, M., *Kaessmann, H. and *Reymond, A. (2009) Segmental copy number variation shapes tissue transcriptomes. Nat. Genet. 41: 424-429. URL

Rosso, L., Marques, A. C., Weier, M., Lambert, N., Lambot, M. A., Vanderhaeghen, P., and Kaessmann, H. (2008) Birth and rapid subcellular adaptation of a hominoid-specific CDC14 protein. PLoS Biol. 6:e140. URL

Potrzebowski, L., Vinckenbosch, N., Marques, A. C., Chalmel, F., Jegou, B., and Kaessmann, H. (2008) Chromosomal Gene Movements Reflect the Recent Origin and Biology of Therian Sex Chromosomes. PLoS Biol. 6:e80. URL

Brawand, D., Wahli, W., and Kaessmann, H. (2008) Loss of egg yolk genes in mammals and the origin of lactation and placentation. PLoS Biol. 6: e63. URL

Vinckenbosch, N., Dupanloup, I., and Kaessmann, H. (2006) Evolutionary fate of retroposed gene copies in the human genome. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A. 103: 3220-5. URL

Marques, A. C., Dupanloup, I., Vinckenbosch, N., Reymond, A., and Kaessmann, H. (2005) Emergence of young human genes after a burst of retroposition in primates. PLoS Biol. 3:e357. URL

Burki, F. and Kaessmann, H. (2004) Birth and adaptive evolution of a hominoid gene that supports high neurotransmitter flux. Nat. Genet. 36: 1061-3. URL

*Emerson, J. J., *Kaessmann, H., Betran, E., and Long, M. (2004) Extensive gene traffic on the mammalian X chromosome. Science 303: 537-540. URL

Kaessmann, H., Wiebe, V., Weiss, G., and Pääbo, S. (2001) Great ape DNA sequences reveal a reduced diversity and an expansion in humans. Nat. Genet. 27: 155-6. URL

Kaessmann, H., Wiebe, V., and Pääbo, S. (1999) Extensive nuclear DNA sequence diversity among chimpanzees. Science 286: 1159-1162. URL

Kaessmann, H., Heissig, F., von Haeseler, A., and Pääbo, S. (1999) DNA sequence variation in a non-coding region of low recombination on the human X chromosome. Nat. Genet. 22: 78-81. URL