Genetic Adaptation to Pathogens and How It Affects the Immune System Using Both Modern and Ancient Genomes
AIMS
how changes in the genomic sequence over time shaped present-day predisposition to
diseases
it is a multi-disciplinary research team
bioinformatician
geneticist
archaeologist
immunologist
ext of our previous study show that
genetic diversity in just Qatari Nationals alone can represent large amount of MENA genetics
OBJECTIVES
Pathogenicity of variants over time
why?
how natural selection on immuno-related genes have impacted disease risk?
at which ancient period did selective pressure occur the most?
what are the pathways or biological functions most affected?
how many deleterious variants in ancient past are now benign?
how many non-deleterious variants in ancient past are now deleterious?
to look at presence/absence of
positive selection
give advantage
negative selection
give diadvantage
modifiers
eQTL
in particular
innate
evolutionary history of genes that encode for immune receptors
TOL and HMC
number of genes
1500 - IRIS
4000 - InnateDB
disease
Diabetes and insulin resistance
Artherosclerosis
Obesity and dyslipidemia
Comparison of retroviruses & endogenous viral elements
how this increases the likelihood of getting diseases
why?
are there any proviruses that did not infect germ lines
i.e., exist in ancient but not in modern
when did HERVs started to become non-infectious?
Subtopic
endogenous
non-pathogenic/non-infectious after some time
human endogenous retroviruses (HERVs)
exogenous
trigger for other diseases
human herpesvirus 6 (HHV-6)
multiple sclerosis
becomes pathogenic/infectious after time
human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1)
increase predisposition to lymphoma
Effects of ancient migratory patterns on predisposition to diseases
Those whose ancestors migrated from Southern Arabia to Levant
from Hunter Gatherer to Farmers
Those ancestors who remain as bedouin in Arabia
from living in abundance to bedouin lifestyle
DATA
Ancient DNA
4 periods
Neolithic
settlement
Bronze Age
settlement
Iron Age
settlement
Middle Ages
ancient skeleton
Modern DNA
Qatar BioBank
14,000 samples
for some we have information of their COVID status
questionnaire
14k
proteomics
3K
metbolomics
3K
transcriptomics
2K
COLLABORATION
What we are looking for?
Expertise in ancient DNA
K in the area of Paleogenetics
Possibility of