Professor Lluis Quintana-Murci

Understanding human infectious diseases through the lens of evolutionary genetics

1:00pm - 2:00pm / Thursday 4th February 2021
Type: Webinar / Category: Department / Series: Evolutionary Archaeology Seminar Series
  • Suitable for: Our webinar series is openly accessible to all. To register please contact: lucy.timbrell@liverpool.ac.uk
  • Admission: Free.
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Immune response is one of the functions that has been most strongly targeted by natural selection during human evolution. The evolutionary genetic dissection of the immune system has greatly helped to distinguish genes and functions that are essential, redundant or advantageous for human survival. It is also becoming increasingly clear that admixture between early Eurasians with now-extinct hominins such as Neanderthals or Denisovans, or admixture between modern human populations, can be beneficial for human adaptation to pathogen pressures. In this webinar, Lluis will particularly focused on how integrating population genetics with functional genomics in populations with various modes of subsistence or exposed to different ecologies — including ancient DNA data from different epochs — can inform about the nature of immune functions related to lifestyle transitions (e.g., from hunting and gathering to farming), the action of natural selection directly and the history of past epidemics.

Speaker: Professor Lluis Quintana-Murci
Affiliation: Insitut Pasteur and the Collège de France

To register please contact: lucy.timbrell@liverpool.ac.uk