B.A., Kirkland College, Liberal Arts
M.S., Oregon State University, Botany
Ph.D., Cornell University, Population Genetics

I joined the IGD in July of 2002 after working about ten years on molecular population genetics of Drosophila and humans (see older publications at bottom of page). In general, I have been interested in how demographic and historical processes interact with selective forces to shape patterns of genetic variation. In my first five years at the IGD, I developed a population genetic framework for Sorghum bicolor based on species-wide patterns of sequence variation. These studies have established that sorghum is considerably less variable than maize and that the frequency spectrum and haplotype structure of variation is highly perturbed from the patterns expected in a population at equilibrium. The evolutionary forces that have produced these patterns appear to be complex in that they cannot be explained by simple models such as a domestication bottleneck in an unstructured population.

Currently I am spending most of my time on a project with Jean-Luc Jannink and Peter Bradbury (USDA-ARS) to analyze barley SNP data that are being generated as part of the Barley CAP (see http://barleycap.cfans.umn.edu/). We will characterize patterns of population structure and linkage disequilibrium in a large collection of North American barley accessions, and evaluate approaches for association mapping in this population.

Recent publications:

Hamblin, MT, ML Warburton, and ES Buckler. 2007. Empirical Comparison of Simple Sequence Repeats and Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms in Assessment of Maize Diversity and Relatedness. PLoSONE:e1367.
http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0001367

Hamblin, MT, MG Salas Fernandez,  MR Tuinstra,  WL Rooney and  S Kresovich. 2007. Sequence Variation at Candidate Loci in the Starch Metabolism Pathway in Sorghum: Prospects for Linkage Disequilibrium Mapping. Crop Sci 47:S125-S134. http://crop.scijournals.org/cgi/content/full/47/S2/S-125

Hamblin, MT1, AM Casa1, H Sun, SC Murray, AH Paterson, CF Aquadro, and S Kresovich. 2006. Challenges of detecting directional selection after a bottleneck: lessons from Sorghum bicolor. Genetics 173:953-964. http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/173/2/953

Hamblin, MT, MG Salas Fernandez, AM Casa, SE Mitchell, AH Paterson, and S Kresovich 2005.  Equilibrium processes cannot explain high levels of short- and medium-range linkage disequilibrium in the domesticated grass Sorghum bicolor. Genetics 171: 1247-1256. http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/171/3/1247

Hamblin MT, Mitchell SE, White GM, Gallego J, Kukatla R, Wing RA, Paterson AH, Kresovich  S.  2004. Comparative population genetics of the panicoid grasses: sequence polymorphism, linkage disequilibrium and selection in a diverse sample of Sorghum bicolor. Genetics 167:471-83. http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/167/1/471

Older papers on population genetics of humans and Drosophila available online:

Hamblin MT, Thompson EE, Di Rienzo A (2002) Complex signatures of natural selection at the Duffy blood group locus. Am J Hum Genet 70:369-83 http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(07)63952-4

Smirnova I1, Hamblin MT1, McBride C, Beutler B, Di Rienzo A (2001) Excess of rare amino acid polymorphisms in the Toll-like receptor 4 in humans. Genetics 158:1657-64 http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/158/4/1657

Hamblin MT, Di Rienzo A (2000) Detection of the signature of natural selection in humans: evidence from the Duffy blood group locus. Am J Hum Genet 66:1669-79 http://www.ajhg.org/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297(07)62996-6

Hamblin MT, Veuille M (1999) Population structure among African and derived populations of Drosophila simulans: evidence for ancient subdivision and recent admixture. Genetics 153:305-17 http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/153/1/305

Hamblin MT, Aquadro CF (1999) DNA sequence variation and the recombinational landscape in Drosophila pseudoobscura: a study of the second chromosome. Genetics 153:859-69 http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/full/153/2/859

Hamblin MT, Aquadro CF (1997) Contrasting Patterns of Nucleotide Sequence Variation at the Glucose Dehydrogenase (Gld) Locus in Different Populations of Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics 145:1053-1062. http://www.genetics.org/cgi/content/abstract/145/4/1053

Hamblin MT, Aquadro CF (1996) High nucleotide sequence variation in a region of low recombination in Drosophila simulans is consistent with the background selection model. Mol Biol Evol 13:1133-1140. http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/13/8/1133