Jan Andersson

Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at Department of Cell and Molecular Biology; Molecular Evolution

Mobile phone:
+46 70 167 95 98
E-mail:
jan.andersson@icm.uu.se
Visiting address:
Husargatan 3
752 37 UPPSALA
Postal address:
Box 596
751 24 UPPSALA

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CV:
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Short presentation

I am a senior lecturer in microbial evolutionary genomics. Since the early 10s, I have been heavily involved in teaching and teaching issues, currently at the chairman for the Educational Board of Engineering (TUN).

My research is about how changes in the genome facilitate evolutionary adaptations to new environments in eukaryotic microorganisms, a process for which I have contributed to the understanding

Keywords

  • microbiology
  • molecular evolution
  • comparative genomics
  • lateral gene transfer
  • horizontal gene transfer
  • evolutionary genomics
  • anaerobic protists
  • diplomonads
  • molekylär bioteknik
  • programutveckling
  • mikrobiologi
  • horisontell genöverföring
  • sustainability

Biography

I grew up in Björklinge and began studying at Uppsala University in 1990. After military service and an ERASMUS year in Brighton, I began my doctoral studies in 1995, where I studied genome evolution in Rickettsia, which are obligate intracellular bacteria. I was able to show that their genome contained pseudogenes, something that had previously been mainly linked to eukaryotes, and I also contributed to the genome sequence of Rickettsia prowazekii – the first complete genome published by a Swedish research group.

After my doctoral dissertation in 1999, I spent three years as a postdoc at Dalhousie University in Canada, where I studied horizontal gene transfer between prokaryotes and eukaryotes and its importance for the evolution of microbial eukaryotes. When I returned to Uppsala in 2003, I continued my research on genome evolution in protists, especially how horizontal gene transfer contributes to adaptation. During the 2000s, my studies helped to establish this as an important process in the evolution of eukaryotes. My focus has been on diplomonads such as Giardia, Spironucleus and Trepomonas, where we investigate, among other things, species boundaries, adaptation to an oxygen-poor environments and how some species have returned to a free-living life from being dependent on a host organism.

I have had a strong commitment to teaching and program development. In addition to teaching traditional courses in bioinformatics and molecular biology, I have worked extensively with project courses. In these courses, I have developed structures to involve external actors from industry and authorities as project clients. In recent years, I have also worked extensively on how teaching can be structured to train students' sustainability skills

 I was programme director for the Master of Science in Molecular Biotechnology Engineering programme between 2013 and 2021. During that time, I carried out, together with the program council and involved departments, a review and restructuring of the entire program with the aim of strengthening progression, the goal fulfillment and the matching with professional life.

Since 2023, I have been chairman of the technical education board, which has overall responsibility for the technical education at the faculty.

Research

The overall goal of our research is to understand how different evolutionary processes acting on the genomic level have changed, and still are changing, the biology of microbial eukaryotes. We focus on diplomonads, a peculiar group with the genetic material divided into two separate nuclei in the cell. Knowledge from our research gives a deeper understanding of the origin and evolution of parasites, and the role of eukaryotic microbes in natural environments.

We are using sequencing technology to do whole genome sequencing of different diplomonads. Using bioinformatic tools we identify differences and similarities within the group, as well as between diplomonads and other organisms. Then we are trying to couple differences in the genome to variations in the biology.

The group diplomonads both contains parasites which, for example, infect humans (e.g. Giardia lamblia) and fish (e.g. Spironucleus salmonicida), but also species that do not cause disease in the host, and free-living species such as Trepomonas and Hexamita inflata. We have shown that diplomonads have adapted to oxygen-poor environments by acquisition of genetic material from other organisms. We have also demonstrated the presence of hydrogenosomes, hydrogen-producing organelles, in some diplomonads and that the free-living diplomonads have evolved from organisms that were dependent on a host organism. Horizontal gene transfer from the bacteria taken up as food by the eukaryote has contributed to the adaptation to a life outside the host organism.

Jan Andersson

Publications

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