Genomics to be the central theme at the 20th Congress of the Spanish Physical Anthropology Society

The UAB organises the 20th national scientific meeting of physical anthropologists, which will take place from 12 to 14 July in Barcelona. This year's edition is entitled "Physical Anthropology in the Age of Genomics”. Over 140 experts will discuss the latest advances and application of new techniques and methodologies.

06/07/2017

The 20th Congress of the Spanish Physical Anthropology Society (SEAF) is organised by the Biological Anthropology Unit of the Department of Animal Biology, Plant Biology and Ecology at the UAB, which has structured the papers and presentations around the following themes: Molecular Anthropology, Primatology and Human Evolution; Biodemographics and Human Ecology; Reconstruction of Human Populations; Osteology and Palaeopathology; and Applied Anthropology.

“For the Biological Anthropology Unit, this congress represents a challenge which will permit conducting a double analysis: we will look at the evolution of our field, and we will take on the responsibility to look towards the future and overcome the challenges posed by the new technologies", say researchers from the Department of Animal Biology, Plant Biology and Ecology and members of the organising committee.

At the same time as the congress is held there will also be a symposium on “Genomics in Anthropology: new challenges and opportunities” held on 13 July and organised by the UAB and the UPF.The symposium will include the presence of renowned local and international scientists, who will be sharing their experience and discussing with the attendants the latest advances and challenges existing in genomic anthropology.

Guest speakers will include Paolo Francalacci, lecturer of Genetics of the Department of Zoology and Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Sassari; Ivo Gut, director of the National Centre for Genomic Analysis (CNAG); Garrett Hellenthal from the UCL Genetics Institute of the University College of London; Tomàs Marquès Bonet, head of the Compared Genomics Group at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE, UPF-CSIC and CNAG) and Lluís Quintana-Murci, scientific director of the Institut Pasteur and researcher in Human Evolutionary Genetics.

The symposium will display the potential of new increasingly cheaper and quicker genomic technologies and methodologies which are being gradually introduced into genetic anthropology laboratories, and will also discuss the need for training in computational biology and laboratory methods used in their implementation.

According to the researchers organising the event, “Genomics is here to stay. If anthropologists from all over the world are capable of responding to this challenge by combining all the tools we have at hand, new and traditional, the important issues in anthropology can be formulated in a much more efficient manner. This can already be seen in the revolution produced in the past years in the genomics of primates and palaeogenomics".