Lemur Biology and Primate Genome Evolution

Lemurs hold a key position at the base of the primate evolutionary tree and include more than 50 species. Our interests center on the biology of different lemur species and how we can use a deep understanding of genetic and genomic diversity among and within different lemur species to add to our understanding of primate genome evolution. The Duke Lemur Center (DLC) houses over 15 species of lemurs as well as numerous subspecies. We are using small-scale sequencing to obtain orthologous nuclear sequence from each lemur species at DLC for genomic and phylogenetic comparisons. We hope these primer pairs and sequences will constitute a "genetic toolkit" that can be used by all future lemur researchers for multi-species comparisons.

Key Recent Publications

• Horvath JE, Willard HF  (2007) Primate comparative genomics: lemur biology and evolution.  Trends In Genetics. 2: 979-988. NCBI Link