Erik Andersen

About

Erik Andersen is a 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 was awarded the Firestone Medal for Excellence in Research. He earned his Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, studying developmental genetics of chromatin remodeling in Caenorhabditis elegans under the advisement of Dr. H. Robert Horvitz. His research interests shifted to quantitative genetics and genomics during 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 understanding the genes and molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic differences in evolutionary genetics, utilizing large-scale genetics and genomics studies in nematodes as model animals. His laboratory created extensive collections of wild strains for multiple nematode species to explore questions of evolutionary relevance, including molecular interactions in epistasis and niche preferences in nature. His contributions span genetic, genomic, physiological, systems, and ecological perspectives. In 2023, his laboratory moved to Johns Hopkins University to further research in genetics and genomics in Caenorhabditis and other nematode species, including efforts to establish new model parasitic nematode species to investigate drug resistance and host-pathogen biology.

Research topics

• Genetics
• Biology
• Computational biology
• Ecology
• Evolutionary biology
• Biochemistry
• Toxicology
• Zoology
• Chemistry
• Pharmacology

Selected publications

• The long and short of hyperdivergent regions

  Trends in Genetics · 2024-12-19 · 7 citations

  reviewOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Transposon-mediated genic rearrangements underlie variation in small RNA pathways

  Science Advances · 2024-09-20 · 6 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Transposable elements (TEs) can alter host gene structure and expression, whereas host organisms develop mechanisms to repress TE activities. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans , a small interfering RNA pathway dependent on the helicase ERI-6/7 primarily silences retrotransposons and recent genes of likely viral origin. By studying gene expression variation among wild C. elegans strains, we found that structural variants and transposon remnants likely underlie expression variation in eri-6/7…

  PublisherDOI

• Integrating metabolomics into the diagnosis and investigation of anthelmintic resistance

  Trends in Parasitology · 2024-11-20 · 3 citations

  reviewSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Evolution of the rate, molecular spectrum, and fitness effects of mutation under minimal selection in <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i>

  bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) · 2025-09-26 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen access

  Abstract The rate, molecular spectrum, and fitness effects of mutations vary at all levels of the biological hierarchy, from within individual genomes to among taxonomic domains. Understanding the evolutionary factors underpinning that variation is of fundamental importance to biology. Accurate quantification of the properties of mutations requires that other evolutionary forces, especially natural selection, be minimized as much as possible. To investigate the evolution of the mutational proces…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Naturally occurring variation in a cytochrome P450 modifies thiabendazole responses independently of beta-tubulin

  PLoS Pathogens · 2025-01-14 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding

  Widespread anthelmintic resistance has complicated the management of parasitic nematodes. Resistance to the benzimidazole (BZ) drug class is nearly ubiquitous in many species and is associated with mutations in beta-tubulin genes. However, mutations in beta-tubulin alone do not fully explain all BZ resistance. We performed a genome-wide association study using a genetically diverse panel of Caenorhabditis elegans strains to identify loci that contribute to resistance to the BZ drug thiabendazole…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• Large scale nutrigenetics and genomics in a tractable metazoan model

  NIH · $2.8M · 2017–2022

• Discovery of conserved molecular mechanisms underlying population-wide variation in toxin responses

  NIH · $3.2M · 2019–2025

• CSBR: Living Stocks - Enhancement of the Caenorhabditis Natural Diversity Resource

  NSF · $708k · 2019–2022

Frequent coauthors

• Stefan Zdraljevic

  University of California, Los Angeles

  41 shared

• Robyn E. Tanny

  Johns Hopkins University

  35 shared

• Timothy A. Crombie

  Northwestern University

  34 shared

• Christian Braendle

  Institut de Biologie Valrose

  32 shared

• Daniel E. Cook

  Google (United States)

  32 shared

• Daehan Lee

  Northwestern University

  27 shared

• Kathryn S. Evans

  Northwestern University

  26 shared

• Gaotian Zhang

  Université Paris Sciences et Lettres

  25 shared

Labs

• Andersen LabPI

Awards & honors

• Pew Biomedical Scholar
• National Science Foundation CAREER recipient
• Fulbright Global Scholar recipient
• American Cancer Society Research Scholar
• Human Frontiers Science Program Grantee

Similar researchers at Johns Hopkins University

• Michael Schatzh-111
• Yumi Kimh-64
• Kyle Cunninghamh-46