Research interests include the development of novel bioinformatics techniques to characterize Nucleic and Amino acid data that does not have homologous matches to existing database entries.  I specialize in modeling protein families and domains through the use of Hidden Markov Models.  Major research projects include the TLFAM series of databases, COGfam set of Clusters of Orthologous Genes, and the KinFam database representations of the various Kinase families. Other current projects include the design of microarrays and the analysis, storage, visualization and mining of microarray data.

     Students with an interest in Bioinformatics are welcome to pursue research in my group. Students with a background in programming, algorithm development, parallel programming, statistical analysis or physics are encouraged, provided that a basic Biological problems and concepts is also understood. Since UNR has no Bioinformatics training course as yet, the student will be expected to take on a steeper learning curve than in other labs.

     Funding comes from the Nevada BRIN grant. See www.unr.edu/BRIN for details. 
Additional funding comes from the Grape Genomics project (see http://gcramer-mac.ag.unr.edu/nevadawinegrapes.htm).

Representative Publications

Gollery M, Rector D, Lindelien J.  TLFAM--a new set of protein family databases. OMICS. 2002  6:35-7.

A Plea to Pharma: Save the Bioinformaticists! p.88, Genome Technology, July 2002

 2002 Would be a great year for genomics if…, p.61, Genome Technology, January 2002

 Gene-BLAST – an improvement to the BLAST algorithm. http://www.timelogic.com/technology_whitepapers.html (Whitepaper), December 2001

 Stuck in a BLAST rut? p. 56, Genome Technology, July 2001

 Tera-BLAST – a Hardware Accelerated Implementation of the BLAST Algorithm. Whitepaper, August 2000

 Proteomics vs. Genomics. The Biotech Journal, October 1998

 Genomics.  p. 55, The Biotech Journal, September 1998