Topic: Atlantic herring - an ideal vertebrate model to detect and understand molecular mechanisms underlying adaptation
Speaker:Leif Andersson
Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Speaker Biography:
Professor Leif Andersson is currently a Senior Professor of Functional Genomics at Uppsala University, Sweden, and a Professor of Animal Genomics at Texas A&M University, USA. He received his Ph.D. in Animal Breeding and Genetics from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in 1984 and was appointed Professor of Animal Genetics in 1992. He is a pioneer and a leading figure in this field.
Professor Andersson’s research achievements in animal domestication, particularly in the evolutionary genetics and genomics of domestic animals, are at the forefront internationally. As a leading scientist in animal genetics, he has made significant contributions to food security and sustainable development for a growing world population. By utilizing molecular markers and whole-genome resequencing to capture the "signatures of selection" associated with domestication, he has established a "from phenotype to causal mutation" research paradigm. He was the first to discover the regulatory mutation in the porcine IGF2 gene that promotes lean muscle growth, and he identified the transcription factor ZBED6, which was derived from a DNA transposon hundreds of millions of years ago. Furthermore, he has elucidated the mechanisms of domestication and adaptation in chickens, horses, rabbits, Darwin's finches, and the Atlantic herring.
Professor Andersson is a Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry, a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA), an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and an International Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He was awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture in 2014. He has published nearly 500 research papers, with over 53,000 citations on Google Scholar and an h-index of 114.
Event Details:
·Time: 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM, Monday, October 12, 2026
·Venue: Room 244, Huiyuan Building, Qianhu Campus, Nanchang University
·Hosted by:
Academic Committee of Nanchang University
School of Life Sciences, Nanchang University
