Guido Barbujani
| Guido Barbujani | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 31, 1955 (age 62) Italy |
| Citizenship | Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Fields | Genetics, Evolutionary Biology |
| Institutions | State University of New York, Stony Brook; University of Ferrara |
| Alma mater | University of Ferrara |
| Known for | Contributions to Population genetics |
| Influences | Robert R. Sokal; Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza |
Guido Barbujani (born January 31, 1955) is an Italian population geneticist, evolutionist and literary author born in Adria, who has been working at the State University of New York at Stony Brook (NY), at the Padua and Bologna Universities, and is now a professor at the University of Ferrara since 1996.
A population geneticist by training, has been working on several aspects of human genetic variation. In collaboration with Robert R. Sokal, he pioneered the statistical comparison of patterns of genetic and linguistic variation, showing that language differences may contribute to reproductive isolation, and hence promote genetic divergence between populations.
His analyses of geographic patterns of genetic variation in Europe support Luca Cavalli-Sforza's Neolithic demic diffusion model, i.e. the idea that farming spread in the Neolithic mainly because farmers did, and not by cultural transmission. Two implications of this finding are that most Europeans' ancestors did not live in Europe, but in the Near East, up to Neolithic times, and that in their Westward expansion the early farmers carried with them their genes, their technologies, and possibly their languages too.
His studies of the amount of DNA differentiation among human populations, and of its spatial distribution, led to the conclusion that traditional human racial classification fails to account for most of the existing patterns of genetic variation. Rather, it seems that genetic variation is largely uncorrelated across genes, which, if confirmed, would explain why no consensus was ever reached on a catalog of human biological races. This activity has also resulted in publications for the general public.
His recent DNA studies focus on genetic characterization of ancient human populations, such as Paleolithic anatomically modern humans of Cro-Magnoid morphology, the Etruscans and the Neolithic (nuragic) Sardinians.
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