Request Expert

The world of molecular biology is experiencing a deluge of quantitative data with the advent of new technologies such as high throughput sequencing, chromatin-immunoprecipitation sequencing, and RNA sequencing. New sequencing technologies are now producing sequence data at a very high rate, and this has created a greater need for bioinformatics tools to effectively organize and analyze the data.

One part of Expert's research is on correlating genotypes with phenotypes. He develops methods that can be used to associate a genotype (sequence data) with phenotype (physical traits) while taking the phylogenetic history of the organisms under consideration into account. In short, he is mining datasets of mutational history implied by phylogenetic trees for concurrent changes in phenotype and genotype among lineages to identify candidate loci for phenotypic traits. Another part of his research is related to finding binding sites for transcription factors that regulate gene activity and patterns between different transcription factor binding sites. The results of this can help elucidate regulatory networks in different cell types.


Array