Dr Dan Andrews (Leader, Genome Informatics - JCSMR)

Title: Understanding mutation functional effect (and not producing yet another mutation effect inference tool)

Abstract: A luminary in the field of mutation functional effect prediction commented to me that producing a new predictive tool was much like opening a new Starbucks.  By this he meant that it took lots of effort but yielded nothing really new.  I completely agree with this, but this belies the opportunities presented in that we are only just for the first time seeing the real mutational spectrum at both a genomic and population level, due to the increasing availability of sequencing data.  I will discuss this with reference to three projects that are ongoing in my team.  These projects are motivated by the practical need for better understanding of human mutation and/or variation observed in clinical genomic data - which in turn requires a much better understanding of the basic functional relevance of mutation and the evolutionary processes which select from the sequence diversity that this produces. 

Associate Professor Rob Lanfear (Leader, Division of Ecology and Evolution - RSB) 

Title: The Rate and Spectrum of Somatic Mutation in Plants

Abstract: For a long time, plant scientists have debated the importance of somatic mutations to plant ecology and evolution. To ground these debates in fact, we need basic measurements about how many somatic mutations accumulate as plants grow. I will describe our recent efforts in developing and applying new methods to make these measurements. It turns out that plants seem to accumulate remarkably few somatic mutations, suggesting that somatic mutations might not matter much after all.