Topic: human populations

This introductory lecture compares contemporary patterns of health with those of earlier human populations. It presents the central ideas of evolutionary medicine and uses examples to show how evolutionary explanations can contribute to understanding disease and improving health.

This lecture examines traits and diseases influenced by many genetic variants. It introduces genome-wide association studies, pleiotropy and polygenic risk scores, then considers their use in precision medicine. Outstanding limitations include unexplained heritability and the uneven representation of human populations in genomic research.