Many genetic variants linked to autoimmune disease affect how immune cells respond to infection or inflammation, but most have been studied in people of European ancestry. Under the mentorship of Dr. Gosia Trynka at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK), Mikhael will study Mexican and Peruvian individuals whose genomes contain DNA inherited from more than one ancestral population, allowing him to examine whether the same genetic change behaves differently depending on the surrounding ancestral DNA segments.
The project will generate the first ancestry-aware, stimulation-resolved map of immune regulatory variation in Latin American populations. “By taking advantage of genetic admixture, I hope to separate the effects of ancestry and environment, which are often difficult to disentangle when comparing populations. This will help us understand which immune responses are shared across populations, which are population-specific, and how genetic regulatory networks contribute to these differences,” Mikhael says.