Evolution, catastrophes, genome doubling and clinical implications: Insights into genomic instability from large- and small-scale cancer sequencing

The last 10 years have seen tremendous advances in our knowledge of genomic instability, which is a hallmark of cancer. We have been involved in a number of local and international efforts to better understand genomic instability across different cancers, which I will briefly describe.
A particular focus of this talk will be the analysis and insights from a rapid autopsy study of patients with melanoma that has been undertaken at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in wheich we sequenced about 80 cancers using WES and WGS from 13 patients. This has revealed the dominant mode of evolution in lethal and seems to have surprising clinical and biological implications.
I will also describe the computational tools we have had to develop along the way to help make sense of genomic instability.