A few highlights from 2025 and 2026

A lovely moment from our Urla retreat in October 2026, with collaborators from the Compevo Lab from METU and Human-G lab from Hacettepe University, the Kırdök Lab at Mersin University. Special thanks to Vasıf Şahoğlu and Limantepe Excavation team for their warm hospitality.

• Ceyda, Begüm, and Şevval presented their results at the Urla retreat organized by Compevo and Human-G Labs in October, 2026.

• We are pleased to share three publications to which our lab contributed through collaborations spanning ancient genomics and immunology. We thank all our collaborators for their expertise and teamwork.

Ancestry, admixture, and pathogens in contemporaneous Neolithic farmers and foragers on the Island of GotlandCommunications Biology (2026)DOI: 10.1038/s42003-026-10498-0.

Equal in death: Ancient genomic analysis of children’s early Christian burialsScience Advances (2026)DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aeb8588.

Comprehensive αβ T-Cell Receptor Repertoire Analysis Reveals a Unique CD8+ TCR Landscape in DOCK8-Deficient PatientsAllergy (2025)DOI: 10.1111/all.16580.

• Begüm and Ceyda gave lectures on Linux and R for interns at Middle East Technical University (METU) in July-August 2026.

• Ceyda, Begüm, and Şevval presented their work at the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Symposium (EEBST), held at Mersin University, in July 2026.

• Şevval presented a poster entitled “Human Oral Microbiome and Its Impact on Dental Caries Across the Last 7,000 Years in Anatolia” at the Congress of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB 2025), held in Barcelona, Spain, in August 2025.   

• Şevval gave a lectures about methods for genetic kinship estimation at the summer school organized by the International Human Ancient DNA, Ancestry, and Mobility (HAAM) society.