Searching for sapiens-specific evolution
Mattias Jakobsson receives new funding from the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR) to “develop a statistical, machine-learning–based framework that jointly analyses genomes from archaic humans, ancient southern Africans, and present-day populations.”
In the next four years, the project expects to identify genomic regions and biological pathways that evolved rapidly during the emergence of modern humans by detecting sapiens-specific adaptive variants.
Ancient southern African genomes, representing the deepest known human lineages, are particularly informative, as variants shared across these groups must predate the earliest H. sapiens divergences (~300,000 years ago). By contrasting these genomes with those of Neandertals and Denisovans, evolutionary changes unique to H. sapiens can be identified. In addition to methodological development, the project will substantially expand the dataset of high-quality ancient southern African genomes and integrate functional analyses to elucidate the biological significance of sapiens-specific adaptive variants.
Mattias is also a co-investigator on another VR-funded project, Functional Mechanisms of Genetic Variants Driving Modern Human Evolution, led by PI Tuuli Lappalainen at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. This project will advance understanding of the genetic basis of traits unique to modern humans, a fundamental challenge in evolutionary biology.
Ancient DNA and the Evolution and Emergence of Pathogens in Africa
Carina Schlebusch and Maja Vukovikj have been awarded a new VR grant to gain new insight into the history of infectious disease and host adaptation in Africa by integrating pathogen and host genomic data through time.
Over the next five years, the project will investigate how infectious diseases emerged, evolved, and persisted in Africa over time using ancient DNA from archaeological human remains.
Ancient DNA provides a direct way to investigate these processes by recovering genetic material from past human populations and the pathogens that infected them. Africa is central to human evolutionary history and a major source of pathogen diversity and zoonotic emergence, but it remains underrepresented in ancient pathogen research.
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