When I'm not doing research, I enjoy practicing historical swordsmanship and brewing award-winning beers.

My colleagues who do excellent work on MS! Also, as an evolutionary biologist, the question of how genetic variants that increase the risk of autoimmune diseases are maintained in the genome is a fascinating one. Pathogens are an important driver of natural selection, and the interactions between genes, pathogens, and the environment will be key to understanding MS. It's a great example of how natural selection often involves complex trade-offs.

The confirmation of the crucial role of Epstein-Barr Virus in making people susceptible to MS. It is very likely that MS risk genes involved in the immune response to EBV are under strong natural selection, and there may be an evolutionary trade-off between response to EBV infection and autoimmunity.

MS prevalence shows a striking geographic pattern. MS is more common in people of European descent, and more common further from the equator. It is likely that this pattern has been shaped by natural selection. Our project is designed to identify specific combinations of genetic variants that cause MS and have undergone natural selection. We will carry out genome-wide scans for natural selection and target regions of the genome known to be associated with MS risk. This will generate knowledge regarding the selective forces that have driven the differences in MS risk between populations. We will examine the evolutionary causes of the strong latitude gradient in MS prevalence that is observed in some populations. We will test whether specific combinations of genetic variants that have undergone selection are associated with MS, giving us a more detailed picture of the genetic architecture that contributes to risk.

This research will improve our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that cause MS by identifying specific combinations of genetic variants that are associated with disease and have undergone natural selection. The knowledge that we generate regarding the selective forces that have driven the differences in MS risk between populations will enable more informed targeting of the molecular mechanisms behind the disease. Identifying specific genes that are under local selection in response to latitude-linked environmental factors will help to better target therapies aimed at these risk factors.

My "lab" is a high-performance computing cluster! I enjoy the wide variety of interesting research problems I encounter working in computational biology. Usually there's a lot of detective work involved in figuring out how to solve them. But the variety also means there's a lot to keep up with!