About me

I am interested in developing new ways of studying human evolution. I have developed new methods for identifying Neanderthal and Denisovan DNA in modern human genomes and studied the first Neanderthal community using ancient DNA. I am currently a Assistant Project Scientist at UC Berkeley.

Contact

laurits dot skov at sund dot ku dot dk (check daily)

laurits_skov at eva dot mpg dot de (inactive)

lauritsskov at berkeley dot edu (inactive)

lskov at cs dot au dot dk (inactive)

Github: https://github.com/LauritsSkov

Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=X7Aqz5oAAAAJ&hl=en

Twitter: @SkovLaurits

Method development

I developed a Hidden Markov Model (HMM) to detect archaic introgression that does not depend on the availability of Neanderthal or Denisova reference genomes

The python package is available to install by running:

pip install hmmix

Documentation is available here:

Studying Neanderthal communities

Using ancient DNA from 13 Neanderthals from two sites in Siberia - Chagyrskaya and Okladnikov Cave we were able to give a unique glimpse into the what a Neanderthal family might have looked like. You can read the study here.

Studying the effects of Neanderthal DNA in present day humans

By studying 27,566 Icelanders we were able to detect evidence of both Neanderthal and Denisovan introgression. By using the electronic health records from these individuals we were able to detect the health impact af Neanderthal introgression in people today.