Abstract
The question of how heritable mutations arise is one of long-standing interest in biology. In the case of bacteria, there was a debate about whether mutations arise as a consequence of adaptation to selective pressure from the environment, or whether they are pre-existing in populations even in the absence of such selective pressure. This was famously resolved as the latter by Luria and Delbruck. Genomic technologies now allow us to ask similar questions in humans. How is genetic diversity generated and what are the consequences? How do mutations acquired during the course of our life sometimes lead to cancer, and can we understand the evolutionary history of a tumor? My lecture will discuss these issues and illustrate how we have used single cell genomics to provide answers to some of these questions.
