NYCEP Research in Molecular Primatology

Todd Disotell's Population Genetics and Molecular Anthropology Laboratory at NYU (shared with Tony Di Fiore and Cliff Jolly) is one of the best equipped molecular primatology laboratories in the country. Over 2000 square feet have been newly renovated (in 2000) to provide support for all aspects of molecular primatological research. A combination of post-doctoral fellows, technicians and visiting scholars work side by side with NYU and other NYCEP graduate students. An ancient DNA extraction facility is also being developed within the anthropology building. Projects currently being carried out in the laboratory include paternity testing, population genetic analyses, analysis of retroviral insertion, conservation genetic, and phylogeographic and phylogenetic analyses of taxa ranging from New World monkeys to Old World monkeys and hominoids, including museum skins and ancient humans. Students working in this lab include Araya, Burrell, Dvoskin, Hemmalin, Listman, Raaum, Sterner, Suárez, Sutton, and Telfer.

Don Melnick and Juan-Carlos Morales direct the CERC (Center for Environmental Research and Conservation) molecular primatology lab at Columbia, which concentrates on primate systematics and conservation genetics. They have collaborated with a number of other NYCEP faculty in field and lab analyses, including the dissertations of numerous graduate students (including Munir Md Zain, Perez-Sweeney, Rosenblum, Tosi, and Valderrama).

Mike Steiper has recently joined the CUNY faculty at Hunter, where he will continue his research on the evolution of anti-malarial genes in orangutans and humans and also questions of primate phylogeny via DNA analyses. He is currently developing the Anthropological Genetics Laboratory at Hunter College.

The molecular genetics facilities at AMNH have hosted a number of NYCEP internships, and their staff, most notably Rob De Salle and Ward Wheeler, have served on several dissertation committees (e.g., Gonder, Perez-Sweeney, Tosi, Wildman, and Uddin).