My research seeks to understand the somatic evolutionary processes that occur within our bodies as we age and their consequences for health. Evolution is often considered to be an almost imperceptibly slow process. However, the cells that compose our own bodies are constantly acquiring mutations. Some of these mutations may influence cellular phenotypes, such as growth, resulting in clonal expansions. Over time our bodies become a patchwork of clones. These processes drive cancer progression and may contribute to ageing.  Due to technical limitations until recently these evolutionary landscapes have remained almost entirely unexplored. Our group works with laser capture microdissection and genome sequencing to describe and understand these processes of somatic evolution. In particular I develop and apply methods to study somatic mutational landscapes across diverse species, leveraging the power of comparative evolutionary genomics to gain insights into somatic mutational processes across the tree of life.

Notably cancer risk does not increase proportionally with lifespan or body-size across species. This observation, known as ‘Peto’s Paradox’, suggests that larger, longer-lived species have evolved superior cancer suppression mechanisms. Studying somatic mutation and clonal dynamics in these species could lead to the discovery of their cancer resistance mechanisms, opening the door for novel therapeutic strategies.