Torres, Manuel John

NSF Minority Postdoc Fellow 2006-2008 University of Georgia Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory 111 Riverbend Rd. #224 Athens, GA 30605 USA mjtorres@uga.edu

Arrives: 20 July
Departs: 16 August

I completed the PhD in Genetics at the University of California, Davis in 2004 in the lab of Professor John Yoder. My dissertation research involved the characterization of a normalized and subtracted EST library derived from the parasitic plant Triphysaria versicolor and construction of an annotated biological database that is being used to advance molecular genetic studies in parasitic plant evolution in the angiosperms (the flowering plants).

In May 2005, I joined the Plant Genome Mapping Laboratory as a postdoc at the University of Georgia with Dr. Andrew H. Paterson, working on comparative genomics of the Brassica species complex, an important domesticated crop plant (whose cultivars include brocoli, cauliflower, kale, cabbage, and brussel sprouts), a close relative of Arabidopsis thaliana, and an important evolutionary model species comprised of three tetraploids that formed by interspecific hybridization between three diploid progenitors. My research will focus on the construction of a physical map of Brassica oleracea based on a linear ordering of BACs and DNA hybridization data using probes anchored to Brassica Genetic Maps, the annotation of newly sequenced Brassica BACs that map to the flowering locus in Arabidopsis, and an analysis of genome rearrangements, patterns of gene loss and retention, and mutation rate disparities between gene duplicates following polyploidy.