The Centre for Geogenetics is a Danish Basic Research Centre of Excellence (Grundforskningscenter) which officially opened in September 2010. It is located at the

Natural History Museum of Denmark The Natural History Museum of Denmark () is a natural history museum located in Copenhagen, Denmark. It is affiliated with the University of Copenhagen The museum became an organizational entity in 2004 with the merger of Copenhagen's Zoological ...

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ...

and financed by the

Danish National Research Foundation Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A Danish person, also called a "Dane", can be a national or citizen of Denmark (see Demographics of Denmark) * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, ...

Research program

The centre originally focused on questions related to evolutionary biology and geology, but has expanded into various health and disease related topics. The program currently includes: * How did the first human colonization of the Americas happen. The centre addresses the timing, routes and origin of these questions * Why, how and when did the timing, nature and causes of the Late Quaternary megafaunal extinctions happen * Origins, intermixing and migration routes of humans into the New World’s northern extremes (North America, Greenland) * Providing long-term insights into the response of polar ecosystems and coastal sea ice cover to global warming * Advance our understanding of the fundamental behavior of ancient DNA in sediments (Environmental DNA, eDNA, "dirt" DNA) *

Environmental DNA Environmental DNA or eDNA is DNA that is collected from a variety of environmental samples such as soil, seawater, snow or air, rather than directly sampled from an individual organism. As various organisms interact with the environment, DNA ...

(eDNA) of water systems like oceans, lakes and streams from polar to tropical regions * Detecting novel pathogens in relation to human cancer and inflammatory diseases

People

The labs and offices host close to 110 people of some 20 different nationalities from all over the world. CGG has five research groups, each headed by a PI. The groups are: The Willerslev Group (headed by Professor Eske Willerslev), the Orlando/Paleomix Group (headed by Professor Ludovic Orlando), the Gilbert Group (headed by Professor Tom Gilbert), the Anthropocene-Quaternary Group (headed by Professor Kurt Kjær), and the Genetic Identification and Discovery (GID) Group headed by Deputy Director Anders J. Hansen. The centre is headed by Professor

Eske Willerslev Eske Willerslev (born 5 June 1971) is a Danish evolutionary geneticist notable for his pioneering work in molecular anthropology, palaeontology, and ecology. He currently holds the Prince Philip Professorship in Ecology and Evolution at Univer ...

Facilities

The centre holds up to date laboratories: including two

ancient DNA Ancient DNA (aDNA) is DNA isolated from ancient sources (typically Biological specimen, specimens, but also environmental DNA). Due to degradation processes (including Crosslinking of DNA, cross-linking, deamination and DNA fragmentation, fragme ...

laboratories; post-PCR/modern DNA laboratories; the National High-throughput Sequencing Centre; sediment core facility. Collections: The

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

zoology collections with

Late Pleistocene The Late Pleistocene is an unofficial Age (geology), age in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, also known as the Upper Pleistocene from a Stratigraphy, stratigraphic perspective. It is intended to be the fourth division ...

and

Holocene The Holocene () is the current geologic time scale, geological epoch, beginning approximately 11,700 years ago. It follows the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene to ...

vertebrates from Denmark, Greenland and South America.

Publications

Results from the centre have been published in ''

Nature Nature is an inherent character or constitution, particularly of the Ecosphere (planetary), ecosphere or the universe as a whole. In this general sense nature refers to the Scientific law, laws, elements and phenomenon, phenomena of the physic ...

'', ''

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

'' and other journals and include: sequencing of the first ancient

human genome The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as the DNA within each of the 23 distinct chromosomes in the cell nucleus. A small DNA molecule is found within individual Mitochondrial DNA, mitochondria. These ar ...

and the first aboriginal Australian genome, both revealing previously unrecognized human migrations; establishing the first Holocene sea ice record from northern Greenland, underlying the causes of the

Pleistocene/Holocene megafauna extinctions The Late Pleistocene to the beginning of the Holocene saw the extinction of the majority of the world's megafauna, typically defined as animal species having body masses over , which resulted in a collapse in faunal density and diversity acro ...

; and evidence of pre-Clovis occupation in North America. In June 2013 researchers at the centre moved the limit for the oldest

full genome sequence Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing or just genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organism's ...

10-fold when they sequenced a 700.000 year old horse genome. As of August 2017 the centre's scientists have published more than 551 publications of which 32 were published in ''Nature'' and ''Science''.

References

External links