J. Robert Manak, PhD
Principal Investigator, Iowa Oikopleura team
In collaboration with the Thompson and Chourrout groups at the Sars International Centre for Marine Molecular Biology, our group performs high-throughput genomic analyses for the Oikopleura genomics project, including the use of tiled genomic microarrays and RNA-seq for developmental transcriptomics. Additionally, we perform ChIP on chip and ChIP-seq analyses to explore chromatin structure and the use of histone modifications across developmental time. Finally, we explore transcriptional responses to environmental stressors such as heavy metals; our working hypothesis is that some portion of the "dark matter" of the genome is devoted to such stress responses which can only be revealed by stressor-specific experiments outside of the confines of optimal laboratory culture conditions.