Professor Laurence Hurst

I am the Professor of Evolutionary Genetics in the Department of Biology and Biochemistry at The University of Bath. My research interests cover a broad span of evolution, genetics and genomics. My group dominantly use computational and mathematical techniques to understand the way genes and genomes evolve. I am especially interested in understanding whether selection might operate on what have commonly been assumed to be unimportant mutations (e.g. synonymous mutations, small genome re-arrangements) and if so why. This has relevance for diagnosis of genetic diseases, as well as for gene and genome manipulation (for health, food or research).