Titles
- Professor of Genome Sciences
Linked information
- maitreya(at)uw.edu
Departments
Roles
BMHA Training Faculty, HALO Faculty, Invertebrate Core Director, NSC Core Director, Shock Center Executive Committee
Aneuploidy, evolution, and aging.
Dr. Dunham develops and applies genomic tools to study genome evolution and genetic variation in yeast and humans. She has a special interest in how gene and chromosome copy number variation contributes to adaptation, the mechanisms by which such variation arises, and the relationship between aneuploidy and aging. They utilize the budding yeasts as a testbed for technology development and as an experimentally tractable system for evolutionary genetics and genomics. By leveraging these systems in creative ways, she hopes to learn in molecular detail how cells evolve and the mechanisms by which they do so, addressing important open questions on complex trait genetics, mutation spectrum, genome structure, mechanisms and consequences of copy number change, genetic interactions, evolution of gene expression, and other fundamental topics, including aging. She is excited to be applying the methods of yeast evolutionary genetics to studies of the biology of aging.
