Peter Keightley


Peter D. Keightley is a British geneticist who is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.

Education

Keightley was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a PhD in 1989 for research on genetic variation supervised by William G. Hill. During his doctoral work he collaborated with Henrik Kacser on a highly cited paper on genetic dominance.

Research

Keightley leads a laboratory which works on evolutionary genetics and the evolutionary impact of new mutations on molecular genetic and quantitative trait variation and fitness. His research investigates genetic variation and adaptation through the analysis of nucleotide variation within natural populations and between different species.
Keightley's research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC).

Awards and honours

Keightley was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2014. His nomination reads: