Johns Hopkins UniversityEST. 1876

America’s First Research University
Erik Andersen

Erik Andersen

Professor and Vice Chair of Biology

Contact Information

Research Interests: Genetics and genomics of complex traits; host-pathogen genomics and drug resistance; evolutionary genetics

Erik Andersen is geneticist with extensive experience in molecular, quantitative, and population genetics and genomics. He received his B.S. in Biological Sciences from Stanford University, where he also was awarded the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Research given to the top undergraduate researcher each year. He received his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he was an Anna Fuller Cancer Research Fellow, studying the developmental genetics of chromatin remodeling in Caenorhabditis elegans advised by Dr. H. Robert Horvitz.

His research interests shifted to quantitative genetics and genomics for his NIH NRSA Post-doctoral and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Fellowship with Dr. Leonid Kruglyak at Princeton University. From 2013 to 2023, his work at Northwestern University focused on a central question in evolutionary genetics: what are the genes and molecular mechanisms that underlie phenotypic differences? These mechanisms from nematodes, as a model animal, enable large-scale genetics and genomics studies not possible in other animal systems. His laboratory, in the departments of Molecular Biosciences and Cell and Developmental Biology, created huge species-wide collections of wild strains for multiple nematode species to allow them to answer questions of evolutionary relevance ranging from molecular interactions in epistasis to niche preferences in nature.

He has contributed discoveries across genetic, genomic, physiological, systems, and ecological perspectives. Erik is a Pew Biomedical Scholar, a National Science Foundation CAREER recipient, Fulbright Global Scholar recipient, an American Cancer Society Research Scholar, a Human Frontiers Science Program Grantee, and a March of Dimes Basil O’Conor Awardee. In 2023, his laboratory moved from Northwestern University to Johns Hopkins University to further pursuits of genetics and genomics in Caenorhabditis and other nematode species.

Model organisms provide the opportunity to experimentally test the correlations between genetic variation and trait differences across populations because of the ease of manipulation and powerful tools.

However, most model organism research is based on a single wild-type strain background with little connection to natural variation, which is like studying a single person to make conclusions about the entire human species. Selfing Caenorhabditis species, including C. elegans, are isolated worldwide, have ample variation, rich ecological histories, and experimentally tractable traits and genomes. Therefore, these species provide the opportunities to identify the genes that vary among individuals and the molecular mechanisms for how genetic variation causes phenotypic differences.

We can use variation within and across different Caenorhabditis species. Our lab uses a variety of genetic and genomic tools to discover the molecular mechanisms of evolutionary change in Caenorhabditis natural populations. Because parasitic nematodes infect billions of people and cause widespread hardship, we are working to establish new model parasitic nematode species, including ascarids that infect rodents or poultry, to investigate drug resistance and host-pathogen biology. These systems allow us to validate our Caenorhabditis findings in tractable parasitic helminths and require building new genomes and gene models. Please see our lab website for more information. 

 
  • Collins JB, Dilks CM, Hahnel SR, Rodriguez B, Fox BW, Redman E, et al. (2025) Naturally occurring variation in a cytochrome P450 modifies thiabendazole responses independently of beta-tubulin. PLoS Pathog 21(1): e1012602. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2025CollinsPLoSPathogens.pdf
  • Zhang G, Félix MA, Andersen EC. Transposon-mediated genic rearrangements underlie variation in small RNA pathways. Sci Adv. 2024 Sep 20;10(38):eado9461. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ado9461. Epub 2024 Sep 20. PMID: 39303031; PMCID: PMC11414722. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2024ZhangScienceAdvances.pdf
  • Shaver AO, Miller IR, Schaye ES, Moya ND, Collins JB, Wit J, et al. (2024) Quantifying the fitness effects of resistance alleles with and without anthelmintic selection pressure usingCaenorhabditis elegans. PLoS Pathog 20(5): e1012245. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2024ShaverPLoSPathogens.pdf
  • Timothy A Crombie, Ryan McKeown, Nicolas D Moya, Kathryn S Evans, Samuel J Widmayer, Vincent LaGrassa, Natalie Roman, Orzu Tursunova, Gaotian Zhang, Sophia B Gibson, Claire M Buchanan, Nicole M Roberto, Rodolfo Vieira, Robyn E Tanny, Erik C Andersen, CaeNDR, the Caenorhabditis Natural Diversity Resource, Nucleic Acids Research, Volume 52, Issue D1, 5 January 2024, Pages D850–D858. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2023CrombieNAR.pdf
  • Lee D, Fox BW, Palomino DF, Panda O, Tenjo FJ, Koury EJ, Evans KS, Stevens L, Rodrigues PR, Kolodziej AR, Schroeder FC, Andersen EC. Natural genetic variation in the pheromone production of C. elegans. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2023 Jun 27;120(26):e2221150120. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2221150120. Epub 2023 Jun 20. PMID: 37339205; PMCID: PMC10293855. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2023LeePNAS.pdf
  • Zhang G, Roberto NM, Lee D, Hahnel SR, Andersen EC. The impact of species-wide gene expression variation on Caenorhabditis elegans complex traits. Nat Commun. 2022 Jun 16;13(1):3462. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-31208-4. PMID: 35710766; PMCID: PMC9203580. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2022ZhangNatureCommunications.pdf
  • Samuel J Widmayer, Kathryn S Evans, Stefan Zdraljevic, Erik C Andersen, Evaluating the power and limitations of genome-wide association studies in Caenorhabditis elegans, G3 Genes|Genomes|Genetics, Volume 12, Issue 7, July 2022, jkac114. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2022WidmayerG3.pdf
  • Stevens L, Moya ND, Tanny RE, Gibson SB, Tracey A, Na H, Chitrakar R, Dekker J, Walhout AJM, Baugh LR, Andersen EC. Chromosome-Level Reference Genomes for Two Strains of Caenorhabditis briggsae: An Improved Platform for Comparative Genomics. Genome Biol Evol. 2022 Apr 10;14(4):evac042. doi: 10.1093/gbe/evac042. PMID: 35348662; PMCID: PMC9011032. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2022StevensGBE.pdf
  • Crombie TA, Battlay P, Tanny RE, Evans KS, Buchanan CM, Cook DE, Dilks CM, Stinson LA, Zdraljevic S, Zhang G, Roberto NM, Lee D, Ailion M, Hodgins KA, Andersen EC. Local adaptation and spatiotemporal patterns of genetic diversity revealed by repeated sampling of Caenorhabditis elegans across the Hawaiian Islands. Mol Ecol. 2022 Apr;31(8):2327-2347. doi: 10.1111/mec.16400. Epub 2022 Feb 25. PMID: 35167162; PMCID: PMC9306471. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2022CrombieMolEcol.pdf
  • Dilks CM, Koury EJ, Buchanan CM, Andersen EC. Newly identified parasitic nematode beta-tubulin alleles confer resistance to benzimidazoles. Int J Parasitol Drugs Drug Resist. 2021 Dec;17:168-175. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpddr.2021.09.006. Epub 2021 Oct 8. PMID: 34637983; PMCID: PMC8503852. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2021DilksIJPDDR.pdf
  • Lee D, Zdraljevic S, Stevens L, Wang Y, Tanny RE, Crombie TA, Cook DE, Webster AK, Chirakar R, Baugh LR, Sterken MG, Braendle C, Félix MA, Rockman MV, Andersen EC. Balancing selection maintains hyper-divergent haplotypes in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nat Ecol Evol. 2021 Jun;5(6):794-807. doi: 10.1038/s41559-021-01435-x. Epub 2021 Apr 5. PMID: 33820969; PMCID: PMC8202730. https://andersenlab.org/publications/2021LeeNatureEE.pdf
 

Staff Scientists

  • Robyn Tanny
  • Mike Sauria

Post-doctoral researchers

  • JB Collins
  • Nic Moya
  • Amanda Shaver
  • Bowen Wang
  • Nikita Jhaveri
  • John Wang

Graduate students

  • Ryan McKeown
  • Etta Schaye
  • Lance O’Connor
  • Maya Mastronardo