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.
Siv G. E. Andersson | |
---|---|
Born | Siv Gun Elisabeth Andersson 1959 (age 64–65) |
Education | Ph.D. |
Alma mater | Uppsala University |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Evolutionary biology |
Institutions | Uppsala University, University of Cambridge |
Doctoral advisor | Charles Kurland |
Website | www |
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]
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]