Evolutionary ImmunogeneticsEvolBioMed group

EvolBioMed · Saint Petersburg · Tartu

Evolutionary immunogenetics of modern humans

We are interested in understanding the evolutionary history of modern humans and how this shaped the diversity of immune phenotypes observed in contemporary populations.

Our team spans research groups at the University of Tartu in Estonia (people at cGEM) and Saint Petersburg State University in Russia, in collaboration with researchers at ITMO University in Saint Petersburg and Bashkir State Medical University in Ufa.

Illustration of the EvolBioMed research theme: evolutionary biomedicine of human populations
Evolbio group, ITMO University, SCAMT Institute, 2021–2023.

What we work on

Three connected questions drive the group: how selection acting on immune genes shaped present-day disease risk, how human demographic history structured genetic variation, and which host and microbial factors determine the outcome of tuberculosis infection.

Inflammation & autoimmunity

Evolution & genetics of inflammatory conditions

Understanding how pathogen-driven selection shaped modern inflammatory conditions, and which risk variants remain functional in immune cells.

Read more →
Population genetics

Human population genetics

Understanding neutral and adaptive evolution of modern human populations, including rare-variant history and ancestry reconstruction.

Read more →
Host–pathogen

Genetic susceptibility to tuberculosis

Focus on the host: genetic susceptibility to tuberculosis, treatment outcome, and the gut microbiome and resistome during chemotherapy.

Read more →

News

Where we are

Saint Petersburg State University

Department of Genetics and Biotechnology — the oldest department of genetics in Russia.

University of Tartu

Collaboration with the Centre for Genomics, Evolution and Medicine (cGEM) and the Institute of Genomics / Estonian Biobank.

Partners

ITMO University (SCAMT Institute), Saint Petersburg; Bashkir State Medical University, Ufa.

Get in touch. For collaborations, data requests or student positions, write to yunusbb@gmail.com. Dataset accessions and dissemination material are listed on the Resources page.