Uncovering the Drivers of Pathogen Evolution from Ancient DNA to Modern Disease

Linking ancient DNA with modern genomic data provides a powerful framework for examining the evolution of pathogens and their hosts over centuries. Applied to microorganisms, ancient DNA approaches can recover lineages absent from contemporary sampling, expanding our view of past diversity. Temporal calibration points refine estimates of lineage ages and mutation rates, and increasingly enable the reconstruction of gene gain and loss chronologies. In this talk, I will discuss how time‐resolved approaches applied to pathogens can illuminate the processes that have shaped their diversity and adaptation, offering deeper insight into the forces influencing major disease challenges from the past to the present.

About the Speaker

Lucy van Dorp is a UKRI Future Leaders Fellow and Principal researcher at UCL Genetics Institute, University College London. Her research focuses on the use of computational genomic tools to determine the factors underlying the genetic diversity of zoonotic pathogens. Her work spans bacterial, viral and eukaryotic systems and has informed on real time pandemic interventions as well as supporting the reconstruction of events in pathogen histories in deep time using ancient DNA techniques.