Professor Frank Jiggins | Department of Genetics

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Biography

Frank Jiggins joined the Department of Genetics in 1996 as a PhD student and then a junior research fellow. In 2003 he moved to the Institute of Evolutionary Biology at the University of Edinburgh, first as a Wellcome Trust Fellow and then as a Royal Society Research Fellow. In 2009 he returned to Cambridge to take up a university lectureship in the Department of Genetics. He is now a Professor of Evolutionary Genetics.

Research Interests

Our lab studies the evolution and genetics of hosts and parasites, mostly using Drosophila, Aedes aegypti mosquitoes and rabbits. Which genes cause variation in susceptibility to infection and why is this variation maintained in populations? How does natural selection shape parasite and host genomes? What determines whether mosquitoes can transmit human disease? Our research is addressing these questions using the tools of genomics and evolutionary genetics.

Research Group Links

https://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/research-groups/research-groups/jiggins

http://www.jiggins.gen.cam.ac.uk

Publications

Key publications:

Leitao, AB, Arunkumar, R, Day, JP, Geldman, EM, Morin-Poulard, I, Crozatier, M, Jiggins, FM 2020 Constitutive activation of cellular immunity underlies the evolution of resistance to infection in Drosophila. eLife 9:e59095 DOI: 10.7554/eLife.59095

Duxbury, EML, Day, JP, Vespasiani, DM, Thüringer, Y, Tolosana, I, Smith, SCL, Tagliaferri, L, Kamacioglu, A, Lindsley, I, Love, L, Unckless, RL, Jiggins, FM*, Longdon, B* 2019 Host-pathogen coevolution increases genetic variation in susceptibility to infection. eLife. 8: e46440

Alves, JM, Carneiro, M, Cheng, JY, Lemos de Matos, A, Rahman, MM, Loog, L, Campos, PF, Wales, N, Eriksson, A, Manica, A, Strive, T, Graham, SC, Afonso, S, Bell, DJ, Belmont, L, Day, JP, Fuller, SJ, Marchandeau, S, Palmer, WJ, Queney, G, Surridge, AK, Vieira, FG, McFadden, G, Nielsen, R, Gilbert, MTP, Esteves, PJ, Ferrand, N and Jiggins, FM 2019 Parallel adaptation of rabbit populations to myxoma virus. Science. 363: 1319–1326 doi: 101126/scienceaau7285

Lewis, SH, Quarles, KA, Yang, Y, Tanguy, M, Frezal, L, Smith, SA, Sharma, SP, Cordaux, R, Gilbert, C, Giraud, I, Collins, DH, Zamore, PD, Miska, EA, Sarkies, P, Jiggins, FM 2017 Pan-arthropod analysis reveals somatic piRNAs as an ancestral defence against transposable elements. Nature Ecology and Evolution. 2: 174

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‪Francis M Jiggins‬ - ‪Google Scholar‬