Organization OverviewThe Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases studies the human genetic and immunological determinants of life-threatening infectious diseases. It aims to understand why some children and adults develop a life-threatening or lethal illness in the course of primary infection, while most people exposed to the same microbe remain unharmed. Work in the lab has revealed that so-called inborn errors of immunity, the genetic variants that affect a person's ability to fight off infectious agents, can confer selective vulnerability to a specific severe infectious disease. These inborn errors of immunity to infection can be rare or common, and can affect children or adults. They reveal causal mechanisms of disease that can be triggered by other factors, genetic