Melissa A. Wilson is an evolutionary and computational biologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University who studies the evolution of sex chromosomes.[1][2][3]
She was professionally known as Melissa A. Wilson Sayres from 2010 until her divorce from Scott Sayres, a physical chemist,[4][7] in 2019.[8] Together they have one daughter.[4]
Career
Wilson is an assistant professor of genomics, evolution, and bioinformatics at Arizona State University. There she is PI of the Sex Chromosome Lab, where she studies genome evolution, mutation rate variation, and population history.[2] One finding of her lab is that crossing over between the X and Y chromosomes occurs in some regions of the chromosomes more often than was previously thought.[9] Another discovery is that the Y chromosome is not decreasing in size,[10][11][12] which contradicts previously publicised claims that the Y chromosome might disappear.[13]
She also discovered evidence of a Y chromosome population bottleneck in human history.[14][15] Wilson hypothesised that a possible explanation for this was partially cultural, saying "“Instead of ‘survival of the fittest’ in a biological sense, the accumulation of wealth and power may have increased the reproductive success of a limited number of ‘socially fit’ males and their sons.”[16]
The lab uses the Gila monster as a model organism to understand the evolution of sex chromosomes.[17][18] As part of her research, she started a crowdfunding campaign which successfully raised over $10,000 to sequence the Gila monster's DNA.[19][18] She has referred to the animals as "cool" and "lovable."[18]
Wilson holds one patent for tumor treatments,[20] and is the developer of several software packages, including XYalign, for accurately aligning sex chromosomes,[21] and TumorSim, for simulating tumor heterogeneity.[22]
