David Enard

David is an Assistant Professor in the Ecology and Evolution Department at the University of Arizona. His lab focuses on understanding of the selective impact that pathogens have on the evolution of their hosts. In addition to ancient epidemics in human evolution, David's lab is also focusing on ancient epidemics during the evolution of diverse bats to better understand their exceptional ability to host and tolerate pathogenic viruses.

As a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Petrov Lab (2011-now) David published a number of beautiful papers, including one that showed that adaptation did in fact leave strong signatures in the human genome, that viruses are a dominant driver of protein evolution in their hosts, and that two species of humans, Neanderthals and modern humans exchanged both viruses and defenses against the viruses during the periods of contact and interbreeding. Check out this NYTimes article about this work. Overall, David's work established that viruses and other pathogens are a truly powerful source of selective pressures not just on the specialized immune proteins but on the whole proteome (and like on the whole genome) and that it is possible to learn much about past epidemics from the signatures left by natural selection in the hist genomes. During his PhD in Hugues Roest Crollius's lab at the École normale supérieure in Paris he developed a comparative population genomics approach that allowed him to demonstrate that vertebrates as distant as human and pufferfish often adapt utilizing the same genes.