Kai Zeng

Lecturer
Animal and Plant Sciences
University of Sheffield
United Kingdom

Academician Plant Sciences
Biography

BSc, double major in Statistics and Computer Science, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China (1999) PhD, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China (2007) Visiting PhD student, University of Chicago, USA (2004–2007) Royal Society International Incoming Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK (2008-2009) Royal Society of Edinburgh/Caledonian Research Foundation Biomedical Personal Research Fellow, University of Edinburgh, UK (2009-201) Lecturer then Senior Lecturer, Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield, UK (2011-present)

Research Intrest

My research is focused on population genetics. I am particularly interested in developing realistic and computationally tractable models for analyzing DNA sequence data. The aim is to understand how fundamental evolutionary processes such as mutation, genetic drift, genetic recombination, and natural selection interact with one another, and the impact of these interactions on evolution.

List of Publications
Laine VN, Gossmann TI, Schachtschneider KM, Garroway CJ, Madsen O, Verhoeven KJ, De Jager V, Megens HJ, Warren WC, Minx P, Crooijmans RP. Evolutionary signals of selection on cognition from the great tit genome and methylome. Nature communications. 2016 Jan 25;7:ncomms10474.
Nagylaki T. Clines with partial panmixia across a geographical barrier. Theoretical population biology. 2016 Jun 30;109:28-43.
Jackson BC, Campos JL, Haddrill PR, Charlesworth B, Zeng K. Variation in the intensity of selection on codon bias over time causes contrasting patterns of base composition evolution in Drosophila. Genome biology and evolution. 2017 Jan 12;9(1):102-23.