Dr. Gregory Wray is Professor of Biology at Duke University and Director of Duke’s Center for Genomic and Computational Biology. His research focuses on the phenotypic impact of mutations that influence gene regulation. He is particularly interested in the evolution of diet and cognition during human origins, which he studies using a combination of molecular, genetic, genomic, and computational approaches. Current work in his lab is aimed at identifying and validating regulatory mutations that altered neural development to produce the unique anatomical features of the human brain. A parallel project is investigating regulatory mutations that altered metabolic processes to support the much larger brain of humans. Other topics of interest include evolutionary medicine and the basis for robustness and evolvability of gene regulatory networks.
