What do we do?

Most organisms possess complex immune systems, but our understanding of how this complexity and diversity evolved in natural populations has been limited. Although the frequent emergence of disease-causing pathogens in recent times has shifted this curiosity about revealing the fundamentals of evolving effective immune strategies and their constraints into a major scientific challenge, much of its potential remains unexplored, if not even identified, for future development as a novel line of research (Read Seal et al. 2021 & Bolnick et al. 2025). For example, a robust immune response can protect hosts from infection but may also cause significant damage to their own DNA, cells, and vital organs (See Khan et al. 2017a). How do then immune responses balance these costs and still evolve efficiently to combat deadly pathogens (Khan et al. 2017b, Seal et al. 2025)? How do environmental drivers, such as climate warming and health parameters (including ageing and variation in nutritional intake), influence these processes (e.g., see Sarkar et al. 2025)? What are the underlying mechanisms (Seal et al. 2025)? My lab at Ashoka University aims to answer these questions by primarily studying how the immune system diverges and evolves rapidly in various model insects at both the organismal and molecular levels, as well as by revealing the macroevolutionary processes underlying the evolution and development of the immune system across species. We employ a range of approaches, including theoretical modelling, population biology, experimental evolution, phylogenetic methods and genetic and genomic techniques, to explore the complexities of evolving immune responses.