I started as a postdoc in 2022, after getting my PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology in the Bedford lab. I am broadly interested in studying the process of evolution including how host/pathogen interactions sculpt genomes, how evidence of selective forces like these can be seen in sequence data, and how epistasis constrains evolutionary potential. My work uses phylogenetic and sequence-based approaches to learn about patterns of viral evolution in the viruses that commonly infect us.
Katie Kistler
Postdoc
GitHub
Papers
Positive selection underlies repeated knockout of ORF8 in SARS-CoV-2 evolution
An atlas of continuous adaptive evolution in endemic human viruses
A Bayesian approach to infer recombination patterns in coronaviruses
Rapid and parallel adaptive mutations in spike S1 drive clade success in SARS-CoV-2
Projects
seasonal-cov-adaptive-evolution - Nextstrain builds for seasonal coronavirus