Joanna Masel

About

Joanna Masel is a faculty member in the Ecology & Evolutionary Biology department at the University of Arizona. Her research interests include theoretical population genetics, evolution of robustness, and evolvability. She is involved in exploring the mathematical and biological principles underlying genetic variation and evolutionary processes, contributing to the understanding of how organisms adapt and evolve over time.

Research topics

• Biology
• Medicine
• Internal medicine
• Demography
• Virology
• Genetics
• Psychology
• Psychiatry
• Bioinformatics
• Pediatrics

Selected publications

• The timing of COVID-19 transmission

  medRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2020 · 118 citations

  Abstract The timing of SARS-CoV-2 transmission is a critical factor to understand the epidemic trajectory and the impact of isolation, contact tracing and other non-pharmaceutical interventions on the spread of COVID-19 epidemics. We examined the distribution of transmission events with respect to exposure and onset of symptoms. We show that for symptomatic individuals, the timing of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is more strongly linked to the onset of clinical symptoms of COVID-19 than to the time…

  DOI

• Mutation bias can shape adaptation in large asexual populations experiencing clonal interference

  Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences · 2020 · 53 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  is surprisingly small, occurring largely when one trait is at the boundary between the origin-fixation and multiple mutations regimes.

  DOI

• Order of amino acid recruitment into the genetic code resolved by last universal common ancestor’s protein domains

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences · 2024-12-12 · 30 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  The current "consensus" order in which amino acids were added to the genetic code is based on potentially biased criteria, such as the absence of sulfur-containing amino acids from the Urey-Miller experiment which lacked sulfur. More broadly, abiotic abundance might not reflect biotic abundance in the organisms in which the genetic code evolved. Here, we instead identify which protein domains date to the last universal common ancestor (LUCA) and then infer the order of recruitment from deviation…

  PublisherDOI

• Background Selection From Unlinked Sites Causes Nonindependent Evolution of Deleterious Mutations

  Genome Biology and Evolution · 2024-03-01 · 10 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Background selection describes the reduction in neutral diversity caused by selection against deleterious alleles at other loci. It is typically assumed that the purging of deleterious alleles affects linked neutral variants, and indeed simulations typically only treat a genomic window. However, background selection at unlinked loci also depresses neutral diversity. In agreement with previous analytical approximations, in our simulations of a human-like genome with a realistically high genome-wi…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Combatting SARS-CoV-2 With Digital Contact Tracing and Notification: Navigating Six Points of Failure

  JMIR Public Health and Surveillance · 2023-10-24 · 10 citations

  reviewOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Digital contact tracing and notification were initially hailed as promising strategies to combat SARS-CoV-2; however, in most jurisdictions, they did not live up to their promise. To avert a given transmission event, both parties must have adopted the technology, it must detect the contact, the primary case must be promptly diagnosed, notifications must be triggered, and the secondary case must change their behavior to avoid the focal tertiary transmission event. If we approximate these as indep…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01GM076041

  NIH · $565k · 2011

• THE CONVERSION OF NONCODING SEQUENCES INTO PROTEINS

  NIH · $839k · 2013–2019

• Ecological effects of clonal interference in a changing environment

  NSF · $250k · 2014–2018

Frequent coauthors

• Jennifer James

  Science for Life Laboratory

  28 shared

• Catherine Weibel

  University of Arizona

  22 shared

• Katrin Mende

  San Antonio Military Medical Center

  22 shared

• Anuradha Ganesan

  Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

  22 shared

• Jason Bertram

  University of Arizona

  21 shared

• Rhonda E Colombo

  Madigan Army Medical Center

  21 shared

• David A Lindholm

  Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences

  21 shared

• Sara M Willis

  Uppsala University

  19 shared

Education

• D.Phil., Zoology

  University of Oxford

  2020

• B.Sc.(Hons), Genetics

  University of Melbourne

  1995

Similar researchers at University of Arizona

• Kevin Linh-86
• Kristopher Kleinh-40
• Laura Condonh-35