Dr Ville Mustonen

Ville develops population genetic theory and computational methods to help find and explain functionally relevant natural variation.

Ville graduated from the Helsinki University of Technology (MSc in EE, with distinction) in 2001 having specialised in computational engineering. During his undergraduate years he worked as a research assistant at the Research Centre for Computational Science and Engineering where he also did his master's thesis on molecular simulations under supervision of Professor Kimmo Kaski.

Ville then moved to Oxford and started his graduate work on statistical physics and molecular simulations at the Rudolf Peierls Centre for Theoretical Physics under supervision of Professor Douglas Abraham. His interest in evolution and DNA sparked during a summer school lecture on 'Biologically Inspired Physics', which covered application of statistical physics to sequence alignment problem.

After completing his doctoral degree (DPhil in Physics, University of Oxford, 2005), he moved to Cologne to work with Professor Michael Lässig on population genetic theory. In Cologne Ville developed new statistical methods for identifying functionally relevant genomic variation and for dissecting the individual contributions of different evolutionary forces for sequence evolution. An unexpected outcome of this work has been a more dynamic picture of molecular evolution where genomes evolve under fitness 'seascapes'.

At the Sanger Institute Ville is developing population genetic methods for using measurements of sequence functionality in conjunction with population sequencing data to help explain natural variation.

Selected Publications

• Quantifying selection acting on a complex trait using allele frequency time series data.

  Illingworth CJ, Parts L, Schiffels S, Liti G and Mustonen V

  Molecular biology and evolution 2012;29;4;1187-97

  PUBMED: 22114362; DOI: 10.1093/molbev/msr289

• A method to infer positive selection from marker dynamics in an asexual population.

  Illingworth CJ, Mustonen V.

  Bioinformatics 2012

  DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btr722

• Distinguishing driver and passenger mutations in an evolutionary history categorized by interference.

  Illingworth CJ and Mustonen V

  Genetics 2011;189;3;989-1000

  PUBMED: 21900272; PMC: 3213378; DOI: 10.1534/genetics.111.133975

• Germline fitness-based scoring of cancer mutations.

  Fischer A, Greenman C and Mustonen V

  Genetics 2011;188;2;383-93

  PUBMED: 21441214; PMC: 3122307; DOI: 10.1534/genetics.111.127480

• Fitness flux and ubiquity of adaptive evolution.

  Mustonen V and Lässig M

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2010;107;9;4248-53

  PUBMED: 20145113; PMC: 2840135; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0907953107

• From fitness landscapes to seascapes: non-equilibrium dynamics of selection and adaptation.

  Mustonen V and Lässig M

  Trends in genetics : TIG 2009;25;3;111-9

  PUBMED: 19232770; DOI: 10.1016/j.tig.2009.01.002

• Energy-dependent fitness: a quantitative model for the evolution of yeast transcription factor binding sites.

  Mustonen V, Kinney J, Callan CG and Lässig M

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2008;105;34;12376-81

  PUBMED: 18723669; PMC: 2527919; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0805909105

• Molecular evolution under fitness fluctuations.

  Mustonen V and Lässig M

  Physical review letters 2008;100;10;108101

  PUBMED: 18352233

• Adaptations to fluctuating selection in Drosophila.

  Mustonen V and Lässig M

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2007;104;7;2277-82

  PUBMED: 17287357; PMC: 1892984; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0607105104

• Evolutionary population genetics of promoters: predicting binding sites and functional phylogenies.

  Mustonen V and Lässig M

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 2005;102;44;15936-41

  PUBMED: 16236723; PMC: 1276062; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0505537102