Detecting and deploying adaptive variation in complex plant pan-genomes
Plant Biology Seminar Series

  October 5, 2026 @ 12:15 pm to 01:15 pm

  108 Wartik Laboratory
  University Park

Abstract:
Multiple reference genomes aggregated into single queryable resources (i.e. 'pangenomes') are rapidly becoming powerful foundations for population, evolutionary and quantitative genetics. Looking forward, it is clear that there are tremendous opportunities, but also methodological challenges, to leverage the diversity represented in pangenome resources, especially with complex variants that are typically invisible to most bioinformatic tools. Here, I discuss our efforts to build pengenome-anchored methods to test evolutionary and trait discovery hypotheses, then describe results at several challenging loci across the diversity of flowering plants, including centromere structure in pennycress, deletions and duplications in sorghum, and highly diverged sequences in pecan.

About the Speaker:
- 2007 B.A. Biology, Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO
- 2014 Ph.D. Ecology, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO (John McKay, advisor)
- 2011-14 Graduate and Postdoctoral Research Associate, Institute for Plant Genetics (IPK), Gatersleben, Germany (Tim Sharbel, advisor)
- 2014-2017: NSF PGRP Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, TX (Tom Juenger advisor)
- 2017-Present: Genome Sequencing Center, HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, Huntsville, AL, USA
- 2025-Present: Poplar Team Lead, Center for Bioenergy Innovation

Contact

  Jill Hamilton
  jvh6349@psu.edu