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Evolutionary · Population · Functional Genomics

Marie Saitou Lab

Faculty of Biosciences · Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)

How do genomes enable organisms to evolve, adapt, and persist?

  • How new traits and regulatory systems arise, and how structural variation, chromosome evolution, and whole-genome duplication reshape genomes.
  • How wild organisms thrive in their environments, where populations become vulnerable, and how genomic evidence can inform ecology and conservation.
  • How domestication, human-driven selection, and infectious disease influence molecular adaptation.

We address these questions using population and comparative genomics, transcriptomics, gene-regulatory analysis, and evolutionary modelling.

Seminars and scientific exchange are welcome. Marie is happy to give talks at other institutions, and we welcome enquiries from researchers interested in visiting or speaking at NMBU.

Lab news

September 2026GeneralNew!

Rytis Plioplys and Abu Rahad will join the lab as MSc students

Rytis will study telomere length and epigenetic aging, co-supervised by Yunsung Lee (Norwegian Institute of Public Health). Rahad will investigate cattle genes associated with resistance to bovine viral diarrhea virus, co-supervised by Victor Boyartchuk (Norwegian University of Life Sciences).

August 2026GeneralNew!

Saitou Lab website renewed

The lab website has moved from Google Sites to GitHub Pages.

Earlier news