Bergman, Casey
Research interests:
Research in the Bergman lab aims to infer the mechanistic and evolutionary forces that have shaped modern genomes over long periods of time in their natural environments. Current projects in the lab focus on detecting and analyzing transposable element insertions in Drosophila and yeast population genomic data, and using evolutionary and functional genomic data to understand the molecular basis of the Drosophila-Wolbachia symbiosis. The basic rationale underlying research in the lab is that evolutionary processes have encoded functional and historical signals in genomes that can be decoded using computational methods. This inferential approach complements classical experimental methods in biology, and has the potential to reveal deep insights into biological processes that are not possible using in vitro or in vivo methods.