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Albert Sherman Center

The Department of Genomics and Computational Biology occupies 7,000 square-feet on the 4th and 5th floors of the Albert Sherman Center (ASC). The ASC cutting edge design integrates research and teaching in an exciting collaborative environment.

Albert Sherman Center

UMass Chan Medical School visit fosters collaboration with Dubai Health

UMass Chan Medical School and Dubai Health signed a memorandum of understanding to establish mutually beneficial research projects to improve patient care, create an exchange framework for learners between the institutions, and drive transformative advancements for public health locally and globally.

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Nature Communications, 12, 73. January 2021

Long first exons and epigenetic marks distinguish conserved pachytene piRNA clusters from other mammalian genes.

The piRNA loci are transcribed by RNA polymerase II in the male germline of placental mammals. Here the authors show that a long first exon or a long unspliced transcript correlates with germline-specific production of piRNA precursor transcripts and mature piRNAs.

Nature, Volume 587 Issue 7833, 12 November 2020

Although genome sequencing is increasingly routine for humans, it remains much less common in most other species, and only a small portion of the diversity of life is represented in genomic databases. In this issue, three papers take steps to redress the balance, exploring uncharted branches of vertebrate evolution. In one paper, Guojie Zhang and colleagues from the Bird 10,000 Genomes Project compare 363 genomes representing more than 90% of avian families, including 267 newly sequenced bird species. In another paper, Elinor Karlsson and her colleagues in the Zoonomia Project describe their analysis of 240 genomes representing more than 80% of placental mammal families, including 122 newly sequenced species. To analyze these massive data sets, both teams used new software called Progressive Cactus, which is described by Benedict Paten and co-workers in the third paper. The software can align thousands of genomes spanning hundreds of millions of years of evolution by reconstructing ancestral genomes using cactus graphs. The cover image reflects this process, using stylized mathematical graphs to highlight the software used and create constellations of some species sequenced in this week’s issue.

Principal Investigators
Nezar Abdennur, Ph.D.
Andres Colubri, Ph.D.
Manuel Garber, Ph.D.
Elinor Karlsson, Ph.D.
Jill Moore, Ph.D.
Teng-Ting (Elaine) Lim, Ph.D.
Lingfei Wang, Ph.D.
Zhiping Weng, Ph.D.

Research Faculty
Frances Chen, DVM, Ph.D.
Alper Kucukural, Ph.D.
Rachel Daniels, Ph.D.

Senior Research Scientist
Carolina Salomao Lopes, Ph.D.

Research Specialist
Kathryn Lord, Ph.D.

Postdoctoral Fellows
Gaurav Chauhan, Ph.D.
Lucas Rocha-Moreira, Ph.D.
Tianxiong Yu, Ph.D.

Bioinformaticians
Pepper Dawes
Sophia Fortier
Thomas Jacob
Mansi Khandpekar
Salihu Musa
Nishigandha Phalke
Huong Phan

UX Designer
Yinan Dong

Mobile App Developer
Andonaq Grozdani

Software Engineers
Hung Hong
Jonathan Fisher

Research Program Manager
Vedat Yilmaz

Research Associates
Nathaniel Barton
Liam Murray
Meagan Olson
Jon Sundstrom

Research Data Specialists
Brittney Kenney

Graduate Students
Greg Andrews
Yuming Cao
Gaurav Chauhan
Samantha Chigas
Shaimae Elhajjajy
Mingshi Gao
Christopher Husted
Winnie Mkandawire
Adrian Orszulak
Thomas Reimonn
Shuo (Crystal) Shan
Nicole Shedd
Vista Sohrab
Askar Temirbek
Yuqing Wang

Visiting Scholars