Beth Shapiro

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Beth Shapiro

Beth Alison Shapiro (born January 14, 1976 ) is an American evolutionary biologist .

Life

Shapiro initially studied ecology at the University of Georgia (Master's degree 1999). In 1999 she won a Rhodes Fellowship and went to Oxford University , where she received her PhD in 2003 and distinguished herself as a specialist in ancient DNA research . According to DNA studies of mammoths found in Beringia , the extraction of fragments of the legendary dodo in particular attracted scientific attention and public interest. As part of a project from 2000 to 2002, she and a research team succeeded for the first time in isolating tiny pieces of DNA from the claw bones of a 300-year-old specimen from the holdings of the Natural History Museum at Oxford University. The DNA comparison showed a close relationship to the also extinct Rodrigues solitaire and the East Asian flying pigeon ( Caloenas nicobarica ) still living today .

She developed biostatistical methods to reconstruct the population dynamics of extinct or endangered animal species from the gene sequences of samples. She applied this to polar bears, for example, and studied environmental influences on the population. She also used similar methods to study the evolution of the population of RNA viruses in human patients.

Shapiro was director of the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Center, Oxford University's Department of Zoology, where she was the Wellcome Trust and Royal Society Research Fellow. In 2007 she became an Assistant Professor at the University of Pennsylvania .

In 2009 she became a MacArthur Fellow .

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personal data
SURNAME Shapiro, Beth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Shapiro, Beth Alison (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American evolutionary biologist
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1976