What makes us human?
Like bipedal locomotion and complex forebrains, the immune response helps define the human condition.
Comparative Primate Immunity
Past Epidemics and Human Diversity
The human immune system has diversified, with some populations exhibiting differences in early immune response to certain pathogens, or an increase likelihood of developing chronic inflammatory or autoimmune diseases. We are a young species, so such strong functional divergence in immunity is quite puzzling. One possible explanation for immune system differences is uneven selection on the immune systems of geographically separated human populations by past infectious disease epidemics. In the lab we are examining how past epidemic diseases, have altered the immune response to pathogens in different human populations.