About Us

The Jorde laboratory is involved in two major areas of research: gene mapping and evolutionary genetics.  We are analyzing variation in genes in the renin-angiotensin pathway in a series of Utah families and in a cohort of hypertensive subjects to better understand the role of these genes in hypertension susceptibility.  We are also involved in studies of the genetics of schizophrenia, polycythemia, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease.  Our evolutionary genetic research involves the analysis of worldwide genetic variation in human mitochondrial and nuclear DNA (including the Y chromosome). We have been focusing especially on mobile elements, such as Alu and L1 insertion polymorphisms.  We are using these data to test a variety of evolutionary hypotheses, and we are investigating the impact of mobile elements on processes such as recombination and linkage disequilibrium.  We have been exploring the implications of population genetic data for current questions about the relevance of “race” in biomedical settings.

Media coverage of Chad’s paper “Mobile elements reveal small population size in the ancient ancestors of Homo sapiens”, recently published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences:

New York Times - Genome Study Provides a Census of Early Humans … of the National Academy of Sciences, was made by a team of population geneticists at the University of Utah led by Chad D. Huff and Lynn B. Jorde. …

USA Today (blog) -Human ancestors were a tiny, threatened group, study says

Helena Independent Record - Genome study provides a census of early humans

Deseret News - ‘Census’ numbers early humans

Scientist (blog) - Ancient humans more diverse?