We are concerned with the question of how to localize those sites in a genome which play a crucial role for phenotypic adaptation of a species. It is well known that beneficial mutations lead to a loss of genetic variability in its chromosomal vicinity -- a fact that has been termed genetic hitchhiking. We are interested in modelling, quantifying and statistically testing such genetic footprints as they depend on evolutionary mechanisms.

The second interest of our group focuses on computational approaches to gene regulation. Comparative genome analysis became one of the standard routes to "compute" the gene inventory of an organism. The comparison of genomes, transcriptomes and proteomes of closely related organisms is expected to lead to a better understanding of gene regulation, the evolution of gene functions and the gene potential of a species. Work in this group will initially concentrate on the comparative analysis of eukaryotic promoters and the evolution of alternative splice variants.

Thomas Wiehe studied Mathematics and Philosophy at the University of Erlangen and received his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Jena in 1995. He spent two years as postodoctoral researcher with Montgomery Slatkin at the University of Californa, Berkeley; studying mathematical models in population genetics. He switched to comparative genomics in 1997 and joined the group of André Rosenthal at the IMB in Jena. In 1999, Thomas Wiehe became group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena. Two years later, he took on a position as independent group leader in bioinformatics at the Free University Berlin. In 2003, he was appointed Professor for Population Genetics and Bioinformatics at the University of Cologne.