Dr. Ralf C. Mueller

Coming from an IT background I was always fascinated by information storage, transmission and decoding. DNA is basically biological data storage with clever coding mechanisms. With the advent of next generation sequencing technology this information becomes easily accessible. On the computational side I am eager to decode the information hidden in the DNA by applying constantly evolving methods, models, and software. On the biological side I would like to learn to interpret this huge amount of data in an evolutionary context.

Within my project I would like to investigate the evolution of the immune gene repertoire in waterfowl, also known as the “immunome”. By applying comparative genomics, I am assuming a correlation between interspecific differences in the immunome and species specific resistance to avian diseases. Based on this, it should be possible to identify and quantify natural selection acting on genes of the immunome that influence disease resistance. Identifying conservative and variable regions within these genes might inform us about commonalities and differences between species that show different responses to pathogens.

I would further like to extend the idea that interspecific immunome variability is linked to disease resistance and might therefore have a strong influence on the demographic success of a species. I am particularly interested to explore the association of the immunome with speciation rate and species richness by investigating past species radiation events under the light of the immune gene repertoire. Linking these findings with migration, and past climate and geographical events have the potential to extend our knowledge about evolutionary processes and might provide valuable information about species conservation.