Pooja Swali

📣 Work with us! 📣

The Department of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge is looking to appoint an Assistant Professor in Zooarchaeology.

📅 Closing date: 15 September
👉 More info and how to apply: www.cam.ac.uk/jobs/assista...

I am starting a computational lab at LIOS, Riga, Latvia, and going to recruit a few people. Please DM if you are interested in a postdoc or PhD position in my Metabolic Research Group within the TARGETWISE project. I can highly recommend Riga, it is a beautiful city with very good living conditions.

New review paper led by @nancybird1.bsky.social which unpacks the complexities of genetic ancestry and examines what genetic data can and cannot tell us 🧬 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

Thanks to @gregerlarson.bsky.social for a fabulous talk 'Hunting the Earliest Dogs' which rounded up this academic year's UGI seminar series. It was great to have Greger visit us @ucl.ac.uk.

The spatiotemporal distribution of human pathogens in ancient Eurasia - Nature Screening shotgun-sequencing data from ancient humans covering 37,000 years of Eurasian history uncovers the widespread presence of ancient bacterial, viral and parasite DNA and zoonotic pathogens coi...

A big advance today in the infectious disease history of Eurasia: Sikora et al., "The spatiotemporal distribution of human pathogens in ancient Eurasia," www.nature.com/articles/s41.... #histmed #aDNA 🧪🗃️

✨🧬 Sharing our UCL Genetics Institute starter pack of researchers, friends and alumni past and present 🧬 ✨

#UGISKY
(DM us to be added)

go.bsky.app/Gw1NqRa

Had a chance to present my research on Cameroonian genetic history last Thursday at the conference 'From Genes to Nationhood' in Yaoundé, organised with the Cameroonian ministry for Youth Affairs and Civil Education!

Thank you again for coming and the wonderful talk!!

We welcomed @kguschan.bsky.social to @ucl.ac.uk for our UGI Seminar Series. A fantastic talk spanning primate population histories, mito-nuclear interactions, temporal microbiomes, and antimicrobial resistance.

Thank you for coming and for the wonderful talk!! Promise technology will be on our side next time you visit

A pleasure to welcome Kevin Daly @gingerhowley.bsky.social to @ucl.ac.uk for our UCL Genetics Seminar series. Kevin gave a great talk on reconstructing the relationship between animal herding and pathogen evolution using paleogenomic techniques.

Quand la laine a favorisé l’émergence d’une maladie bactérienne Contrairement aux autres borrélioses, Borrelia recurrentis se transmet par les poux et non les tiques. Une nouvelle étude montre que cette transition s’est produit il y a 5000 ans au Néolithique, quan...

Had the opportunity to chat about @poojaswali.bsky.social's study on louse-borne relapsing fever on the French radio today 🧬🦠
www.radiofrance.fr/francecultur...
@franceculture.fr @radiofrance.fr @crick.ac.uk @ucl.ac.uk

Ancient Borrelia genomes document the evolutionary history of louse-borne relapsing fever Several bacterial pathogens have transitioned from tick-borne to louse-borne transmission, which often involves genome reduction and increasing virulence. However, the timing of such transitions remai...

Our @ucl.ac.uk @crick.ac.uk work, out this week in @science.org, traces a genetic time series of bacterial infections to reveal when and how Borrelia recurrentis jumped from ticks to humans—via our body lice.

www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

New UCL-Crick led paper out this week in @science.org on the evolution of louse-borne relapsing fever led by @poojaswali.bsky.social.

See below for her thread explaining the work and it's relevance to when and how this bacteria has adapted to louse-borne human infection.

tinyurl.com/76vzy4tn

Clothing—not agriculture—helped spread a tick disease 5000 years ago New study of a pathogen’s Bronze Age spread challenges longstanding links between disease and early agriculture

Scientists used to think diseases that jump from animals to people really took off when people started domesticating cattle, sheep and goats 11,000 years ago. A new look at ancient bacterial DNA in @science.org by @poojaswali.bsky.social and colleagues suggests the pivotal moment came much later.

Science In Action - WHO Pandemic Agreement reached - BBC Sounds 124 countries have agreed on a global effort to fight future pandemic health threats.

And sharing this BBC Science in Action podcast featuring my amazing supervisor @lucyvandorp.bsky.social (from 24:00) discussing the paper
www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/...

I love this site so much, and our understanding of it has been enhanced in ways we couldn’t have imagined thanks to the hard work of @poojaswali.bsky.social and colleagues! Thanks for letting us be a part of this incredible research! 🥰

Thank you Adelle!! and for your help on this project! ❤️

Congratulations @poojaswali.bsky.social (and everyone else involved) for this amazing achievement! Very excited to have been a part of this ancient pathogen research🦠🧬

Clothing—not agriculture—helped spread a tick disease 5000 years ago New study of a pathogen’s Bronze Age spread challenges longstanding links between disease and early agriculture

And a wonderful article covering our new paper written by @spoke32.bsky.social
www.science.org/content/arti...

And if you’ve made it this far, here’s a bonus photo the Fishmongers site: Richard Madgwick (left), Jack Randell (middle) and Jessica Peto (right) in the Bone Idle Chamber of Fishmongers Swallet. 📷Taken by @archaedelle.bsky.social

Special thank you to my supervisor @lucyvandorp.bsky.social for supporting the analysis and teaching me the pangenome ways and to @pontus-skoglund.bsky.social‬ for making the data generation and this project possible!

Mia Williams, Richard Madgwick, Graham Mullan, Linda Wilson, Kevin Cootes, Ian Armit, @maxgg.bsky.social

Isabelle Glocke, Joel Irish, Monica Kelly, Megan King, Fiona Petchey, Jessica Peto, Marina Silva, @leospeidel.bsky.social , @frankietait.bsky.social , Adelina Teoaca, Satu Valoriani,

@boothicus.bsky.social , @cednotsed.bsky.social ‬, Jesse McCabe, Kyriaki Anastasiado, Christopher Barrington, Matteo Borrini, @archaedelle.bsky.social‬, Jo Buckberry, Lindsey Büster, Rea Carlin, @alexgilardet.bsky.social

Thanks to all collaborators @crick @UCL and the teams at Wetwang Slack, Fishmongers Swallet, Poulton, and Canterbury

Our analysis highlights the complex evolutionary history of B. recurrentis, a pathogen specialised to the human body louse. 🏺🧪

We estimate B. recurrentis diverged from its closest tick-borne ancestor (B. duttonii) between 6,000–4,000 BP, coinciding with the spread of secondary animal products such as wool-based textiles, potentially aiding the transmission shift. 🐑

Also, interestingly we see the bacterial genome from Canterbury genome phylogentically clustering with the Iron age lineages, but was later found to be dated to the medieval period, suggesting it may be the case that multiple distinct lineages existed at this time within Britain

However, in the ‘Medieval clade’, Soj was replaced by a homolog, ParA on its plasmid, showing partitioning function was retained despite genome reduction. We also observed inactivation of recA, involved in DNA repair, during this time. 🤔