Sawsan Wehbi
PhD Student
I am a Genetics GIDP PhD student, minoring in Astrobiology. I am currently funded by the NASA Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant.
I will be working on the long-term evolution of amino acid frequencies across the proteome. At the moment, I am working to assign ages to ancient protein domains. I have a background in bioinformatics and phylogenetics and I’m interested in the origins of life and Astrobiology.
Publications :
Wehbi S, Wheeler A, Morel B, Manepalli N, Minh BQ, Lauretta DS, Masel J. (2024) Order of amino acid recruitment into the genetic code resolved by Last Universal Common Ancestor’s protein domains, PNAS 121: e2410311121.
McShea H, Weibel C, Wehbi S, James JE, Masel J. (2023) The effectiveness of selection in a species affects the direction of amino acid frequency evolution, bioRxiv.
Wehbi, S. S., & Zu Dohna, H. (2021). A comparative analysis of L1 retrotransposition activities in human genomes suggests an ongoing increase in L1 number despite an evolutionary trend towards lower activity. Mobile DNA, 12(1), 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13100-021-00255-x