Evolution of mutagenesis – Annabel Beichman, Ph.D.

Does DNA mutate in the same way across species? What forces drive differences in the mutation spectrum? As a postdoc and “Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Aging” NIH trainee, I studied patterns of mutation across whales, bears, wild mice, humans, killifish, wolves, apes, and more to understand how these processes evolve as a member of Kelley Harris’ lab in the Department of Genome Sciences. I was trained in active learning through the STEP-WISE teacher training for postdocs.

See some of our publications:

Young*, C. L., Beichman*, A. C., Mas Ponte, D., Hemker, S. L., Zhu, L., Kitzman, J. O., … & Harris, K. (2024). A maternal germline mutator phenotype in a family affected by heritable colorectal cancer. Genetics, 228(4), iyae166. *Contributed equally.

Beichman, A. C., Zhu, L., & Harris, K. (2024). The Evolutionary Interplay of Somatic and Germline Mutation Rates. Annual Review of Biomedical Data Science, 7.

Beichman, A. C., Robinson, J., Lin, M., Moreno-Estrada, A., Nigenda-Morales, S., & Harris, K. (2023). Evolution of the mutation spectrum across a mammalian phylogeny. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 40(10), msad213.

DeWitt ,W. S., Zhu, L., Vollger, M. R., Golberg, M. E., Talenti, A., Beichman, A. C., Harris, K. (2023). mutyper: assigning and summarizing mutation types for analyzing germline mutation spectra. Journal of Open Source Software, 8(85), 5227, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05227

Bloom, J. D., Beichman, A. C., Neher, R. A., & Harris, K. (2023). Evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 mutational spectrum. Molecular Biology and Evolution, msad085.

Sasani, T. A., Ashbrook, D. G., Beichman, A. C., Lu, L., Palmer, A. A., Williams, R. W., … & Harris, K. (2022). A natural mutator allele shapes mutation spectrum variation in mice. Nature, 605, no. 7910 (2022): 497-502.

*figure by Natalie Telis from Carlson, DeWitt, and Harris