Jeffrey Blanchard
Associate Professor
Biology Department
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
United States of America
Biography
Microbiome research is among the most exciting and promising areas of science today due to many technological advances, particular in high throughput DNA and RNA sequencing, that allow us to determine in complex environments which microbes are present and their metabolism. A prominent component of our research is using genomic and computational methods to understand the ecology and evolution of gut and forest soil microbiomes. Our laboratory is set up for standard molecular biology and microbial physiology research and contains specialized equipment for isolating and culturing anaerobic bacteria. The research we do has led to the discovery of new bacterial species and metabolic processes that have have far ranging impacts from developing probiotics to understanding climate change. See our laboratory web site for a description of current projects.
Research Interest
Anaerobic Microbiology, Microbial Ecology and Evolution, Genomics, Bioinformatics
Publications
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Blanchard, J.L., Schmidt, G.W. 1995. Pervasive migration of organellar DNAto the nucleus in plants. Journal of Molecular Evolution, 41: 397-406.
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Blanchard, J.L. 2004. Bioinformatics and Systems Biology, rapidly evolving tools for interpreting plant response to global change. Field Crops Research, 90: 117-131.
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Blanchard, J.L., Chen, W., Conlon, E.M., Pomposiello, P.J. 2007. Rapid changes in gene expression dynamics in response to superoxide reveal SoxRS-dependent and independent transcriptional networks. PLoS ONE, 2(11): e1186.
