Master students

Research Project: During my Master’s thesis project, I investigate the temporal changes in the diversity of the mitogenome in the Swedish common carder bee (Bombus pascuorum). Using historical specimens dating back to ~150 years from museum collections and comparing them with modern data I try to to infer whether changes in the demography of Swedish B. pascuorum populations can be tracked with changes in mitogenomic diversity across time.

Research Project: My project focuses on a sarcophagus from Hierapolis in Turkey. This sarcophagus contains four people, two adults and two children. The time of the sarcophagus is around first century to fourth century.The goal is to successfully extract the DNA, that’s why I have 20 samples from those four individuals because it’s an older grave.

Research Project: This master’s thesis continues an unfinished postdoctoral project conducted by Dr Vendela Lagerholm (2016 to 2017) at St. Andrews University in Scotland. For this project, she used ancient DNA metabarcoding of lake sediments to study past vegetation changes in Scotland. The study site is Loch Kinord, located on the eastern side of the Cairngorm Mountains, Scotland.  This  area  is  one  of  the  two  Scottish  regions  where  stomata  findings  have confirmed early Holocene occurrences of pine at almost the same time. A study was also done in the 1960s reporting findings of pine needles in a presumed late glacial stratigraphic layer. This master’s thesis aims to reconstruct the post-glacial vegetation history of the region. We want to see how comparable the sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) data is using  shot  gun  sequencing,  and  not  metabarcoding,  to  the  results  from  previous paleobotanical surveys. We also want to find the earliest occurrence of pine in the records to evaluate  when  and  from  what  source  the  first  populations  were  established  in  the Cairngorms Mountains.

Research Project: I am using whole-genome data to investigate the rise and fall of woolly mammoths on Wrangel island. The aim of this project is to generate and analyze whole woolly mammoth genomes to understand mechanisms of extinction and to obtain information on evolutionary and conservation genetics.

Research project: I am analysing the genomes of several recently sequenced bumblebee species to determine their quality as reference genomes.

Research project: I will be working with Reyhan and Maja on the Novo-Ufimsky burial ground individuals from the Finno-Ugric culture (Kara-Abyz, kab). I will be doing both population genetic analyses and kinship analyses.

Research Project: I work with Dr. Hannah Moots on the MAMBA project, which aims to understand large mammoth bone accumulations at hunter-gatherer sites in Central Europe from around 35,000-25,000 years ago.

Research Project: The medieval graves at Finströms Church, Åland, have provided valuable insights into burial practices through past excavations in 1951 and 2020, revealing graves linked to both an earlier wooden church and a later stone church. This study aims to analyze ancient DNA (aDNA) from 35 individuals using modern genetic techniques to explore ancestry, demographic history, and health conditions. DNA extraction from bones and teeth will be followed by Whole Genome Capture and Shotgun Sequencing to generate comprehensive genetic data, which will then be analyzed using bioinformatics tools such as kinship analysis, GEDmatch, Principal Component Analysis (PCA), and Admixture f-statistics. If time permits, disease screening will be conducted to identify markers of medieval diseases.

Research Project: The project works off of a large collection of palaeontological materials obtained from Denisova Cave, identified through ZooMS as belonging to the rhinoceros family (Rhinocerotidae). In it, ancient DNA (aDNA) is extracted and recovered from these bone fragments, leading to the reconstruction of mitochondrial genomes. The mitochondrial genomes generated will then be employed to identify species and create a mitochondrial phylogeny, facilitating comparisons of population structure across climate transitions.