|
|
|
| Search | Home Page >Directory >Faculty : Current Page |
|
|
|
| Michael R. Thon Assistant Professor |
||
|
Office: 320c LF Peterson Phone: 979-458-4715 Email: mthon@tamu.edu Web Page: http://fcg.tamu.edu |
|
|
| Education | ||
|
|
||
| Teaching: | ||
|
PLPA 689: Special Topics in DNA and Protein Sequence Analysis This course intended primarily for students in the |
||
| Research Emphasis: | ||
|
Genomics and Bioinformatics I am employing comparative genomic approaches to better understand the role of gene content and organization in life style differences of filamentous fungi. My research can be divided into two broad categories: a)Gene family evolution in filamentous fungi. Comparative analysis of the gene content of plant pathogenic and non-pathogenic fungi reveals striking differences in gene content and gene family size. In particular, gene families that have roles in pathogenesis appear to be expanded in pathogenic fungi. I am studying gene family evolution at the genome level to identify whether changes in gene family size play a role in the evolution of pathogenic fungi. b)Identification of segments of conserved synteny in filamentous fungi. As our knowledge of the structure of fungal genomes grows, there are increasing examples of genes that occur in clusters (groups of genes belonging to a common metabolic pathway that are also found in close proximity to one another in the genome). Initial work with the M. grisea and N. crassa genomes reveals that several segments of conserved synteny exist between the two genomes. This suggests that genes arranged in clusters may be a common feature of fungal genomes. I plan to expand this work to include other fungal genomes and determine whether this pattern of conserved synteny is a general feature of fungal genomes and if it is, to define the evolutionary distances at which clustering relationships are evident. Other interests include gene annotation, annotation of gene function, and ontologies for representing biological data, such as gene function and phenotype. |
||
| Recent Publications | ||
|
Dean, R., N. Talbot, D. Ebbole, M. Farman, T. Mitchell, M. Orbach, M.R. Thon, R.D. Kulkarni, J.-R. Xu, H. Pan, N. Read, Y-H Lee, I Carbone, D. Brown, D. Soanes, S. Djonovic, E. Kolomiets, C. Rehmeyer, W. Li, M. Harding, S. Kim, M.-H. Lebrun, H. Bohnert, J. Butler, S. Calvo, L-J. Ma, R. Nicol, S. Purcell, C. Nusbaum, J. Galagan, and B. Birren. 2005. Analysis of the genome sequence of the plant pathogenic fungus Magnaporthe grisea, the causal agent of rice blast disease. Nature. Kulkarni R.D., M.R. Thon, H. Pan and R.A. Dean. 2005. Novel G protein-coupled receptor-like proteins in Magnaporthe grisea. Genome Biology. Ebbole, D., Y. Jin, M.R. Thon, H. Pan, E. Bhattarai, T. Thomas, and R. Dean. 2004. Gene discovery and gene expression in the rice blast fungus, Magnaporthe grisea: analysis of expressed sequence tags. Molecular-Plant Microbe Interactions 17:1337-1347. Thon, M R., Huaqin Pan, Audrey Taro, John Papalas, Doug Brown, Thomas Mitchell, Ralph A. Dean. 2004. The sequence and analysis of Magnaporthe grisea Chromosome VII. In Preparation Thon, M. R., Stanton L. Martin, Stephen Goff, Rod A. Wing, and Ralph A. Dean. 2004. BAC End Sequences and a Physical Map Reveal Transposable Element Clustering Patterns in the Genome of Magnaporthe grisea. Fungal Genetics and Biology In Press Mitchell, T.K., M.R. Thon, J. Jeong, D. Brown, J. Deng, and R.A. Dean. 2003. The rice blast pathosystem as a case study for the development of new tools and raw materials for genome analysis of fungal plant pathogens. New Phytologist 159: 53-61. Thon, M. R., E. M. Nuckles, J. E. Takach, and L. J. Vaillancourt. 2001. CPR1: A gene encoding a putative signal pepptidase that functions in pathogenicity or Colletotrichum graminicola to maize. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions. Thon, M. R., and L. J. Vaillancourt. 2000. Restriction-enzyme mediated integration (REMI) used to produce pathogenicity mutants of Colletotrichum graminicola. Molecular Plant-Microbe Interactions 12: 1356-1365. |
||
|
|
||
 |
||