Sérgio Teixeira

I am a master’s student from the University of Coimbra, currently working on my thesis project at CIBIO. I have an interest in studying how human cultural habits may influence genetic variation through variable exposure to disease. I became intrigued by the recently uncovered association between kidney disease in African Americans and sleeping sickness resistance variants at the APOL1 gene. Presently, as part of my master’s project, I am studying the patterns of haplotype variation linked to protective APOL1 variants in different regions of Africa.

I am especially interested in the island of Príncipe (São Tomé and Príncipe archipelago), which endured a severe sleeping sickness epidemics around 1900.