The study of evolution involves examining how species develop and change over generations, exploring the genetic mechanisms and patterns that drive these transformations. 

This line of research is particularly important for understanding biodiversity, developing next year’s flu vaccine, crime detection, understanding drug resistance in bacteria, or just to see that, somewhat suprisingly, cows are evolutionary closer related to whales than to horses. 

The study of evolution is not limited to genomic material alone. In fact, there is a direct link to the evolution of languages in linguistics. Considering the genome as an extensive text composed of words (genes) in which mutations take place and can cause changes, language similarly undergoes alterations and adaptations over time.

The evolutionary history is often depicted in the form of an evolutionary tree or network. However, one of the biggest challenges is that we cannot observe the past directly, as ancestor species living millions of years ago became extinct, and their genetic material usually too damaged to be properly analyzed. Hence, predicting the evolutionary history is limited to the information available today: the genetic material of currently living species.

Marc pioneers innovative methods to predict evolutionary histories, making a significant contribution to this field. Notably, his work has unveiled groundbreaking techniques for extracting valuable information from data previously deemed irrelevant or noisy. This ability to extract meaningful insights from discarded data markedly improves the reliability and precision of research outcomes.

Follow this link if you want to learn more about Marc Helmuth's work.