Ancestors, Genes, and Care

Every tumor tells a story, but it speaks in a language of growth, spread and dynamics that are incredibly hard to read. What if mathematics could translate it? I will show how mathematical equations can turn routine data from clinical care into a personalized forecast. A short tour through the quiet revolution of bringing numbers to the bedside.

When you think of DNA, you picture the iconic twisted ladder — the double helix, neatly packed into the chromosomes inside your cells. But DNA doesn't always stay on those long, linear chromosomes. Small pieces can break free, loop back on themselves and form closed rings. These extrachromosomal circular DNAs (eccDNA) appear when two breaks occur in the same region of a chromosome and the cell's repair machinery misfires: instead of stitching the original ends back together, it seals the loose fragment into a ring and patches the chromosome up without it. Such circles turn up everywhere — in yeast, in plants, and in every human being on the planet. In healthy cells, they are mostly harmless background noise. In cancer, however, they turn dangerous: tumor cells accumulate large circles loaded with cancer-driving genes, handing tumors a powerful tool to grow, evolve, and dodge treatment.

Every genome is like a little travel diary of your ancestors, and in this talk we’ll open a few of those diaries together. I’ll walk through how scientists read ancestry patterns in DNA and what they really tell us about human diversity and shared origins. We’ll also talk about why it’s important that genomic studies don’t just focus on one group, if we want health research to benefit everyone.