Siv G. E. Andersson

Last updated
Siv G. E. Andersson
Born
Siv Gun Elisabeth Andersson

1959 (age 63–64)
EducationPh.D.
Alma mater Uppsala University
Scientific career
FieldsEvolutionary biology
Institutions Uppsala University, University of Cambridge
Doctoral advisor Charles Kurland
Website www.icm.uu.se/molecular-evolution/andersson-siv/

Siv Gun Elisabeth Andersson (born 1959) is a Swedish evolutionary biologist, professor of molecular evolution at Uppsala University. [1] She is member of both the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of Engineering. [2] [3] She is also Head of basic research at the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation [4] and has been co-director of the Swedish national center for large-scale research Science for Life Laboratory between 2017 and 2021. [5] Her research focuses on the evolution of bacteria, mainly on intracellular parasites.

Contents

Education and career

Andersson grew up in Horndal, Dalarna. Her mother was home care assistant and her father was employed in the wood industry. [6] She studied Biology at Uppsala University, since the programme was the only one that had a course about DNA. She defended her PhD in molecular biology in 1990, under the supervision of Charles Kurland. [7] She applied for a postdoctoral stipend from EMBO to continue her research in the United States, but ended up obtaining a research position at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. [6] She became professor of molecular evolution in 2000, at the Uppsala University's Evolutionary Biology Center. [6] She was elected at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 2005. [2]

Andersson has been very active in developing the Swedish national center for large-scale research Science for Life Laboratory, especially its DNA sequencing and bioinformatics platforms. She served as Co-director for the center between 2017 and 2021. [5]

During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, she contributed, together with Lars Engstrand and with the financial support of the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, to establish the first large-scale testing facility in Sweden [8] [9]

Research

Andersson's research first focused around the role of codon usage in shaping bacterial genomes. [10] After her postdoctoral fellowship, she contributed to sequence one of the first genome of an obligate intracellular parasite, Rickettsia prowazekii , the causative agent of epidemic typhus. [11]

In her later career, her research continued to explore bacteria and their relationships with their different hosts. [12] In particular, she is interested in the genomic consequences of long-term associations of intracellular bacteria. [13] She explored the evolution of Bartonella , [14] Wolbachia , [15] and Planctomycetota, [16] among others.

Andersson has published over 200 peer-reviewed articles, and has an h-index of 61, as of 2022. [17]

Notable awards and honors

Related Research Articles

<i>Rickettsia</i> Genus of bacteria

Rickettsia is a genus of nonmotile, gram-negative, nonspore-forming, highly pleomorphic bacteria that may occur in the forms of cocci, bacilli, or threads. The genus was named after Howard Taylor Ricketts in honor of his pioneering work on tick-borne spotted fever.

The European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) was founded in 1987 in Basel (Switzerland) with around 450 evolutionary biologists attending the inaugural congress. It is an academic society that brings together more than 1500 evolutionary biologists from across Europe and beyond. The founding of the society was closely linked with the launch of the society's journal, the Journal of Evolutionary Biology with the first issue appearing in 1988. ESEB aims at supporting the study of evolution. Beside publishing the journal and co-publishing Evolution Letters, the society organises a biannual congress and supports other events to promote advances in evolutionary biology. ESEB also supports activities to promote a scientific view of evolution in research and education.

Rickettsia prowazekii is a species of gram-negative, alphaproteobacteria, obligate intracellular parasitic, aerobic bacillus bacteria that is the etiologic agent of epidemic typhus, transmitted in the feces of lice. In North America, the main reservoir for R. prowazekii is the flying squirrel. R. prowazekii is often surrounded by a protein microcapsular layer and slime layer; the natural life cycle of the bacterium generally involves a vertebrate and an invertebrate host, usually an arthropod, typically the human body louse. A form of R. prowazekii that exists in the feces of arthropods remains stably infective for months. R. prowazekii also appears to be the closest free-living relative of mitochondria, based on genome sequencing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rickettsiales</span> Order of bacteria

The Rickettsiales, informally called rickettsias, are an order of small Alphaproteobacteria. They are obligate intracellular parasites, and some are notable pathogens, including Rickettsia, which causes a variety of diseases in humans, and Ehrlichia, which causes diseases in livestock. Another genus of well-known Rickettsiales is the Wolbachia, which infect about two-thirds of all arthropods and nearly all filarial nematodes. Genetic studies support the endosymbiotic theory according to which mitochondria and related organelles developed from members of this group.

<i>Coxiella burnetii</i> Species of bacterium

Coxiella burnetii is an obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen, and is the causative agent of Q fever. The genus Coxiella is morphologically similar to Rickettsia, but with a variety of genetic and physiological differences. C. burnetii is a small Gram-negative, coccobacillary bacterium that is highly resistant to environmental stresses such as high temperature, osmotic pressure, and ultraviolet light. These characteristics are attributed to a small cell variant form of the organism that is part of a biphasic developmental cycle, including a more metabolically and replicatively active large cell variant form. It can survive standard disinfectants, and is resistant to many other environmental changes like those presented in the phagolysosome.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Genome size</span> Amount of DNA contained in a genome

Genome size is the total amount of DNA contained within one copy of a single complete genome. It is typically measured in terms of mass in picograms or less frequently in daltons, or as the total number of nucleotide base pairs, usually in megabases. One picogram is equal to 978 megabases. In diploid organisms, genome size is often used interchangeably with the term C-value.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alphaproteobacteria</span> Class of bacteria

Alphaproteobacteria is a class of bacteria in the phylum Pseudomonadota. The Magnetococcales and Mariprofundales are considered basal or sister to the Alphaproteobacteria. The Alphaproteobacteria are highly diverse and possess few commonalities, but nevertheless share a common ancestor. Like all Proteobacteria, its members are gram-negative and some of its intracellular parasitic members lack peptidoglycan and are consequently gram variable.

<i>Ehrlichia</i> Genus of bacteria

Ehrlichia is a genus of Rickettsiales bacteria that are transmitted to vertebrates by ticks. These bacteria cause the disease ehrlichiosis, which is considered zoonotic, because the main reservoirs for the disease are animals.

<i>Orientia tsutsugamushi</i> Species of bacterium

Orientia tsutsugamushi is a mite-borne bacterium belonging to the family Rickettsiaceae and is responsible for a disease called scrub typhus in humans. It is a natural and an obligate intracellular parasite of mites belonging to the family Trombiculidae. With a genome of only 2.0–2.7 Mb, it has the most repeated DNA sequences among bacterial genomes sequenced so far. The disease, scrub typhus, occurs when infected mite larvae accidentally bite humans. Primarily indicated by undifferentiated febrile illnesses, the infection can be complicated and often fatal.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kerstin Lindblad-Toh</span>

Kerstin Lindblad-Toh is a scientist in comparative genomics, specializing in mammalian genetics. She is the Scientific Director of vertebrate genomics at the Broad Institute and a professor in comparative genomics at Uppsala University. In 2010 she co-founded Science for Life Laboratory (SciLifeLab) together with Mathias Uhlén and acted as Co-Director until 2015. As the leader of the Broad Institute's Mammalian Genome Initiative she has led the effort to sequence and analyze the genomes of various mammals, including mouse, dog, chimpanzee, horse, rabbit and opossum. She has researched extensively on the genetics of dogs, identifying genes and genetic variants important in disease susceptibility, morphology and behavior.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ATP6V1H</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

V-type proton ATPase subunit H is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the ATP6V1H gene.

<i>Rickettsia conorii</i> Species of bacterium

Rickettsia conorii is a Gram-negative, obligate intracellular bacterium of the genus Rickettsia that causes human disease called boutonneuse fever, Mediterranean spotted fever, Israeli tick typhus, Astrakhan spotted fever, Kenya tick typhus, Indian tick typhus, or other names that designate the locality of occurrence while having distinct clinical features. It is a member of the spotted fever group and the most geographically dispersed species in the group, recognized in most of the regions bordering on the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea, Israel, Kenya, and other parts of North, Central, and South Africa, and India. The prevailing vector is the brown dog tick, Rhipicephalus sanguineus. The bacterium was isolated by Emile Brumpt in 1932 and named after A. Conor, who in collaboration with A. Bruch, provided the first description of boutonneuse fever in Tunisia in 1910.

Rickettsia typhi is a small, aerobic, obligate intracellular, rod shaped gram negative bacterium. It belongs to the typhus group of the Rickettsia genus, along with R. prowazekii. R. typhi has an uncertain history, as it may have long gone shadowed by epidemic typhus. This bacterium is recognized as a biocontainment level 2/3 organism. R. typhi is a flea-borne disease that is best known to be the causative agent for the disease murine typhus, which is an endemic typhus in humans that is distributed worldwide. As with all rickettsial organisms, R. typhi is a zoonotic agent that causes the disease murine typhus, displaying non-specific mild symptoms of fevers, headaches, pains and rashes. There are two cycles of R. typhi transmission from animal reservoirs containing R. typhi to humans: a classic rat-flea-rat cycle that is most well studied and common, and a secondary periodomestic cycle that could involve cats, dogs, opossums, sheep, and their fleas.

The ATP:ADP Antiporter (AAA) Family is a member of the major facilitator superfamily. Members of the AAA family have been sequenced from bacteria and plants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johan Elf</span>

Per Johan Sven Elf, is a Swedish biophysicist. As of 2013 he is professor of physical biology at Uppsala universitet, Department of Cell and Molecular Biology. He is a member of the board of Uppsala University.

Maria Falkenberg is a professor of medical biochemistry at the Sahlgrenska Academy of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden. She has made important contributions to understanding how the mitochondrial genome is maintained in health and disease.

Vertical transmission of symbionts is the transfer of a microbial symbiont from the parent directly to the offspring. Many metazoan species carry symbiotic bacteria which play a mutualistic, commensal, or parasitic role. A symbiont is acquired by a host via horizontal, vertical, or mixed transmission.

Reductive evolution is the process by which microorganisms remove genes from their genome. It can occur when bacteria found in a free-living state enter a restrictive state or are completely absorbed by another organism becoming intracellular (symbiogenesis). The bacteria will adapt to survive and thrive in the restrictive state by altering and reducing its genome to get rid of the newly redundant pathways that are provided by the host. In an endosymbiont or symbiogenesis relationship where both the guest and host benefit, the host can also undergo reductive evolution to eliminate pathways that are more efficiently provided for by the guest.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sara Snogerup Linse</span> Swedish chemist (1962)

Sara Snogerup Linse is a Swedish Professor of Biochemistry at Lund University. Her research considers the molecular mechanisms of protein self-assembly in Alzheimer's disease. She serves as Chair of the Committee for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She was awarded the 2019 European Molecular Biology Organization Women in Science Award.

Birgitta Henriques Normark is a Swedish doctor and researcher, focusing on the field of host-bacteria interactions and pneumococcal infections. She is a professor of Clinical Microbiology at the Karolinska Institute and is the head physician at the Karolinska University Hospital. She is a member of a number of academies including the European Academy of Microbiology, the American Academy of Microbiology, and the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, of which she was elected president in 2022.

References

  1. ↑ ""Researcher Profile: Siv Andersson"" . Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  2. 1 2 ""KVA Medlemssida Siv Andersson"" (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  3. 1 2 ""IVA Medlemssida Andersson, Siv"" (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  4. ↑ ""New Program on Data-Driven Life Science"". 26 October 2020. Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  5. 1 2 ""Siv Andersson new Co-Director for SciLifeLab"" . Retrieved 2022-03-08.
  6. 1 2 3 ""Tidningen Curie: Hon blev DNA-forskare för att förstå livet"" (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  7. ↑ Andersson, Siv Gun Elisabeth. (1990). Translation, antibiotics and codon evolution. Uppsala University. ISBN   91-554-2551-8. OCLC   22568986 . Retrieved 2021-01-16.
  8. ↑ ""Siv Andersson: Från nyfikenhet till nytta under pandemin"" (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  9. ↑ Törnwall, Mikael (20 May 2020). ""Wallenbergs coronakupp: byggde ett labb utan lov"". Svenska Dagbladet (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  10. ↑ Andersson, SG; Kurland, CG (June 1990). "Codon preferences in free-living microorganisms". Microbiological Reviews. 54 (2): 198–210. doi:10.1128/mr.54.2.198-210.1990. PMC   372768 . PMID   2194095.
  11. ↑ Andersson, SG; Zomorodipour, A; Andersson, JO; Sicheritz-Pontén, T; Alsmark, UC; Podowski, RM; Näslund, AK; Eriksson, AS; Winkler, HH; Kurland, CG (12 November 1998). "The genome sequence of Rickettsia prowazekii and the origin of mitochondria". Nature. 396 (6707): 133–40. Bibcode:1998Natur.396..133A. doi: 10.1038/24094 . PMID   9823893. S2CID   4379381.
  12. ↑ Toft, C; Andersson, SG (July 2010). "Evolutionary microbial genomics: insights into bacterial host adaptation". Nature Reviews. Genetics. 11 (7): 465–75. doi:10.1038/nrg2798. PMID   20517341. S2CID   40576224.
  13. ↑ Sällström, B; Andersson, SG (October 2005). "Genome reduction in the alpha-Proteobacteria". Current Opinion in Microbiology. 8 (5): 579–85. doi:10.1016/j.mib.2005.08.002. PMID   16099701.
  14. ↑ Guy, L; Nystedt, B; Toft, C; Zaremba-Niedzwiedzka, K; Berglund, EC; Granberg, F; Näslund, K; Eriksson, AS; Andersson, SG (March 2013). "A gene transfer agent and a dynamic repertoire of secretion systems hold the keys to the explosive radiation of the emerging pathogen Bartonella". PLOS Genetics. 9 (3): e1003393. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1003393. PMC   3610622 . PMID   23555299.
  15. ↑ Klasson, L; Westberg, J; Sapountzis, P; Näslund, K; Lutnaes, Y; Darby, AC; Veneti, Z; Chen, L; Braig, HR; Garrett, R; Bourtzis, K; Andersson, SG (7 April 2009). "The mosaic genome structure of the Wolbachia wRi strain infecting Drosophila simulans". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 106 (14): 5725–30. Bibcode:2009PNAS..106.5725K. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0810753106 . PMC   2659715 . PMID   19307581.
  16. ↑ Mahajan, M; Yee, B; Hägglund, E; Guy, L; Fuerst, JA; Andersson, SGE (1 April 2020). "Paralogization and New Protein Architectures in Planctomycetes Bacteria with Complex Cell Structures". Molecular Biology and Evolution. 37 (4): 1020–1040. doi: 10.1093/molbev/msz287 . PMID   31808939.
  17. ↑ "Google Scholar: Siv Andersson". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  18. ↑ ""Letterstedska prisen 2002"" (in Swedish). KVA. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  19. ↑ "People in the EMBO Communities". people.embo.org. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  20. ↑ ""Kungl. Vetenskapsakademien: Nya ledamöter invalda, pressmeddelande 2005-02-10" (in Swedish). Retrieved 2022-03-09.
  21. ↑ ""Laureates"" (in Swedish). KVA. Retrieved 2021-01-17.
  22. ↑ "Miljonanslag för stark forskningsmiljö till Uppsala" (in Swedish). 2005-02-17. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
  23. ↑ "ESEB Officers - ESEB | European Society for Evolutionary Biology". eseb.org.
  24. ↑ "Bee bacteria working as vitamin factories | Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation". kaw.wallenberg.org. Retrieved 9 March 2022.
  25. ↑ ""75 million in Wallenberg grant extension to Gunnar von Heijne - Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics"". www.dbb.su.se. Retrieved 2021-01-14.
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