• Professor, Biology
• Professor, Genetics

Alan Templeton

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• Ph.D. in Human Genetics at University of Michigan
• M.A. in Statistics at University of Michigan
• A.B. in Zoology at Washington University

News Stories & Tip Sheets:

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Tracing origins Technique traces origins of disease genes in mixed races April 8, 2008 -- A team of researchers from Washington University in St. Louis that includes Alan R. Templeton and the Israeli Institute of Technology (Technion) in Haifa has developed a technique to detect the ancestry of disease genes in hybrid, or mixed, human populations. The technique, called expected mutual information (EMI), determines how a set of DNA markers is likely to show the ancestral origin of locations on each chromosome.

Those wild ancestors Schaal and collaborators locate rice domestication using DNA Sept. 7, 2006 -- Photo courtesy USDA Schaal rice one. Biologists from Washington University in St. Louis and their collaborators from Taiwan have examined the DNA sequence family tree of rice varieties and have determined that the crop was domesticated independently at least twice in various Asian locales. Jason Londo, Washington University in Arts & Sciences biology doctoral candidate, and his adviser, Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., Washington University Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences, ran genetic tests of more than 300 types of rice, including both wild and domesticated, and found genetic markers that reveal the two major rice types grown today were first grown by humans in India and Myanmar and Thailand (Oryza sativa indica) and in areas in southern China (Oryza sativa japonica). More...

'It's a jungle out there' Competition for sex is brutal in biodiversity hotspots Feb. 2, 2006 -- Good pollinators wanted Mother Nature could use a few more good pollinators, especially in species-rich biodiversity hotspots, according to a new study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS online, Jan. 16, 2006). Jana Vamosi, Ph.D, postdoctoral associate at the University of Calgary and Tiffany Knight, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and their collaborators have performed an exhaustive global analysis of more than 1,000 pollination studies which included 166 different plant species and found that, in areas where there is a great deal of plant diversity, plants suffer lower pollination and reproductive success. For some plant species, this reduction in fruit and seed production could push them towards extinction.

Make love, not war African populations interbred with Eurasians and stayed a while Feb. 2, 2006 -- A new, more robust analysis of recently derived human gene trees by Alan R. Templeton, Ph.D, of Washington University in St Louis, shows three distinct major waves of human migration out of Africa instead of just two, and statistically refutes — strongly — the 'Out of Africa' replacement theory. That theory holds that populations of Homo sapiens left Africa 100,000 years ago and wiped out existing populations of humans. Templeton has shown that the African populations interbred with the Eurasian populations — thus making love, not war.

Can't we just all get along? Early man cooperative, wary, wise, not a warrior July 7, 2005 -- Some species still prey on humans to this day. Early man was more wary than war-like, more intelligent, agile, and cooperative than aggressive, predator or killer, and he co-evolved as the prey of many species. Moreover, in the old days, woman wore the pants in the family and men were basically expendable, not the brightest bulbs on the tree when it came to tools, and functioning best as sentinels wary of predators in edge environments between the forest and savannah. Those are the primary themes of a new book, "Man the Hunted: Primates, Predators and Human Evolution", co-authored by Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences.

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Sleep with Neanderthals? Apparently we (Homo Sapiens) did Seattle Times Aug. 14, 2006 -- Neanderthals are humanity's closest relatives, with brains at least as big as ours, and yet we don't know whether we should include them as members of our own species. But clues lay within the DNA we're carrying around in our cells today. Biologist Alan Templeton of Washington University in St. Louis has found hints that some people of European ancestry carry genes that emerged in Europe more than 300,000 years ago far before our main ancestors left Africa.

Rewriting leprosy's global expansion Newsday (New York) May 13, 2005 -- The ancient scourge known as leprosy likely originated in either East Africa or Central Asia and extended its reach in a pattern mirroring human migration, according to a new analysis of its bacterial agent's unusual genetic fingerprint. WUSTL biology professor Alan Templeton, who was not involved in the study, comments.

A plea to lose the race The Age (AUS) and ABC Science Online (AUS) July 27, 2004 -- The physical features of a primitive human being - the sloping forehead and the heavy brow - can be found everywhere in the 20th century, according to Alan Templeton, professor of biology at WUSTL. He has combined a PhD in genetics with a masters in statistics in order to analyse the characteristics of the DNA of people, plants and animals from all over the world. His conclusion? We're all the same. And not only are we all the same, we've got lots of similar characteristics to our forebears of 1.7 million years ago. Templeton hopes his work will put to bed once and for all the idea that there's a scientific basis for racism.

Templeton has extended this cladistic approach to separate the effects of current population structure from past events that occurred in the history of the species, such as fragmentation events and geographical range changes. Such analyses have provided much insight into recent human evolution and also provide a rigorous manner to identify species.