Humanity at the intersection of science and archaeology

Alisa Kazarina is a microbiologist whose desire is to explore how microbes influence human health and how investigating ancient human-related microorganisms could help researchers to study these relationships. In her job at the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Center, Alisa investigates the remains of ancient human-related microbes that can be found within archaeological material with the help of a new multi-disciplinary area of research – biomolecular archaeology. In parallel, Alisa Kazarina is working towards her PhD thesis investigating the evolution of human-related microbial communities (i.e. human microbiome) and to detect and study ancient human pathogens like Mycobacterium tuberculosis.