Xiang Gao
Postdoctoral Research Associate
xianggao2006(at)gmail.com
(812) 856-0115
B.S., Beijing Agricultural University, Beijing, China.
Ph.D., comajor in Molecular Biology and Bioinformatics, Iowa
State University, Ames, Iowa.
M.S., Statistics, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
Non-coding DNA Evolution
- Intron Evolution - the mechanism and source of intron
birth
Intron Origin remains a mystery. One of the most remarkable blank page is our knowledge about the scource of recently borned introns.The high mutation and indel/replacement rate of intron sequences make it a hard job to trace the source sequences of new introns. Another unsolved conflict is the low intron birth rate vs. the huge amplification of intron in higher eukaryotics. Despite the net lose of introns in conserved orthologue genes, the average intron number per gene in increaseing from lower to higher eukaryotes. The mechanisms of the introns birth might be one of the key to solve those mysterious.
- Noncoding genomic DNA evolution
In hihger eukaryotics, majority genome sequences are noncoding regions, including some well recognized regulatory DNA regions and newly revealed RNA components. Besides studying the dynamic evolution of these known functional elements, I am interested in identifying unknown components and the evolution mechanism of intergenic sequence.
Publications
Gao X, and Lynch M. (2009) Ubiquitous internal gene duplication and intron creation. PNAS. In print. (Co-corresponding author)
Catania F, Gao X, and Scofield, D. (2009) Endogenous mechanisms for the origins of spliceosomal introns. Journal of Heredity, 100(5):591-6. Review
Rho M, Zhou M, Gao X, Kim S, Tang H and Lynch M. (2009) Independent mammalian genome contractions following the KT boundary. Genome Biology and Evolution, 2009:2-12
Gao X, Hou Y, Hirotaka E, Levin H and Voytas DF. (2008) Chromodomains direct integration of retrotransposons to heterochromatin. Genome Res.18(3):359-69 .
Gao X, Vender Valden K, Voytas, DF and Gu X. (2005) SplitTester: software to identify domains responsible for functional divergence in protein family. BMC Bioinformatics. 6(1):137
Gao X, Voytas DF. (2005) A eukaryotic gene family related to retroelement integrases. Trends Genet. 21(3):133-7. (research paper)
Havecker EH, Gao X and Voytas DF. (2005) The Sireviruses, a plant-specific lineage of the Ty1/copia retrotransposons, interact with a family of proteins related to dynein light chain 8. Plant Physiol. 139(2):857-68.
Havecker ER, Gao X, Voytas DF. (2004) The diversity of LTR retrotransposons. Genome Biol. 5(6):225. (review)
Gao X, Havecker ER, Baranov PV, Atkins JF, Voytas DF. (2003) Translational recoding signals between gag and pol in diverse LTR retrotransposons. RNA. (12):1422-30.
Gao X, Rowley D, Gai X, Voytas DF. (2002). Ty5 gag Mutations Increase Retrotransposition and Suggest a Role for Hydrogen Bonding in the Function of the Nucleocapsid Zinc Finger. J Virol. 76(7): 3240-7.
Ke, N., X. Gao, J. B. Keeney, J. D. Broeke, and D. F. Voytas
(1999). The yeast retrotransposon Ty5 uses the anticodon stem-loop of
the initiator methionine tRNA as a primer for reverse transcription.
RNA. 5: 929-38.
My daughter Amy and my husband Qunfeng
