University of Washington, Seattle, WA
Ph.D. Biochemistry (Sept. 1980 - June 1985)

Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA
B.S. Chemistry, summa cum laude (Sept. 1977 - June 1980)

Research Interests:

1) Transgene Recombination, Inheritance, and Expression in Zebrafish

Some of our research goals require the production of transgenic zebrafish via the direct microinjection of cloned genes into fish embryos. Transgenic zebrafish possessing recombinant marker genes are being generated for a variety of purposes, including 1) basic research into recombination mechanisms and transgenesis strategies, 2) the analysis of transgene inheritance, transgene expression, and insertional mutagenesis, and 3) the production of 'biomarkers' suitable for the detection of toxic and/or carcinogenic molecules in aqueous environments.

2) Molecular Systematics and Phylogenetic Analysis

As whole genome sequence information for a wide variety of organisms contines to accumulate, new exhaustive methods for estimating phylogentic relatedness become possible. We have developed a revolutionary method for generating whole genome phylogenies using vector representations of protein sequences. This method uses a standard matrix decomposition (SVD) to process a peptide frequency matrix containing vector representions for all proteins within a large, multi-genome dataset. Precise vector definitions for the proteins in high-dimensional space are obtained as output. Pairwise analysis of vector angles provides distance measures useful for building accurate gene trees. Furthermore, following simple vector addition by species, these same protein definitions can be used to generate comprehensive species trees based on total genome content. A particularly attractive aspect of the technique is that local sequence alignments are neither generated or required. This work is currently being done in collaboration with Jeffery Leader at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology here in Terre Haute, and Michael Berry at the University of Tennesse, Knoxville.

3) Construction and Analysis of DNA Vaccines Against B-cell Lymphoma

Somewhat surprisingly, raw injected DNA can be taken up and expressed in vivo. This allows the design of simple DNA vaccines capable of expressing target antigens for presentation to the immune system. A variety of delivery methods and antigen structures are currently being explored in attempts to understand how best to design DNA vaccines against a mouse B-cell lymphoma, 2C3. This work is being done in collaboration with Swapan Ghosh here in the Life Sciences Department at Indiana State University.