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ICAPB, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK Mark.Blaxter@ed.ac.uk phone +44 131 650 6760 fax +44 131 650 5450 European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge UK The application of modern genome analysis techniques is precipitating a revolution in parasitology. Seven major human parasites are now the subjects of globally-organised genome projects which aim to identify the majority of the expressed genes of the organisms and generate detailed physical maps to aid in the examination of all facets of parasite biology. These projects are generating large amounts of new data and integration of this with previous and ongoing work in immunology, biochemistry and medicine is essential if it is to be exploited fully. We have been charged with aiding in the development of genome databases for each parasite. These will house sequence, physical map, biological, bibliographic and investigator information: the ACEDB system has been chosen for these databases. We are also devising means of accessing the databases through the internet (the world wide web and email based search systems). Advances made for each particular parasite genome (and indeed in the wider field of genomics) can be simply applied to all the projects. Dr. Mark Blaxter email Mark.Blaxter@ed.ac.uk Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology Ashworth Laboratories, King's Buildings University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road EDINBURGH EH9 3JT, United Kingdom phone: (+44) 131 650 6760 Fax :...650 5450 see http://helios.bto.ed.ac.uk/mbx/fgn/blaxter/blaxlab.html
Mark Blaxter Surname Blaxter Date Of Birth 02/02/60 Forenames Mark Lyon Nationality British Degrees B.Sc. (honours) Zoology, First Class. University of Edinburgh (Division of Biological Sciences), 1981 Ph.D. University of London (School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) 1987 Last three posts held 1987-1990 postdoc with Dr. M.E. Selkirk, Department of Biochemistry, Imperial College, London. "Molecular characterisation of surface antigen genes of human filarial parasites" funded by the Medical Research Council, UK. 1990-1993 Wellcome Trust Fellow (Wellcome Advanced Training Fellowship) held in the laboratory of Dr. R.M. Maizels, Professor of Immunology, Biology Department, Imperial College, London. "Transgenic Caenorhabditis elegans as a model for parasitic nematode cuticles" 1993-1996 Wellcome Trust Fellowship. Department of Biology, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine (1993-1995) and Institute of Cell, Animal and Population Biology, Edinburgh University (1995-1996) Dec. 1996 Darwin Trust Lecturer in Nematode Genetics, ICAPB, University of Edinburgh. Publications 1994-1996 In Press Blaxter, M.L. and Liu, L. (1996) Nematode spliced leaders: Ubiquity, Evolution and Utility. International Journal for Parasitology. in press Blaxter, M.L. and D. McK. Bird (1996) "Parasites" Chapter 29 of The Nematode C. elegans II (eds D. Riddle, T. Blumenthal, B. Meyer and J.Priess) Cold Spring Harbor, Cold Spring Harbor Press. in press Dewilde, S., Blaxter, M. L., van Hauwaert, M. L., Esmans, E. L., Marden, M., Griffon, N., and Moens, L. 1996. Globin and globin gene structure of the nerve myoglobin of Aphrodite aculatea. Journal of Biological Chemistry in press D. De Graaf, P. Berghen, L. Moens, T. Demarez, S. Raes, M.L. Blaxter, J.Vercruysse (1996) Isolation, characterisation and immunolocalisation of a globin-like antigen of from Ostertagia ostertagi adults. Parasitology in press
Published Blaxter, M.L. (1996) Protein domains in filarial chitinases. Parasitology Today 12: 42 Blaxter, M. L., Raghavan, N., Ghosh, I., Guiliano, D., Lu, W., Williams, S. A., Slatko, B., and Scott, A. L. (1996) Genes expressed in Brugia malayi infective third stage larvae. Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology 77:77-93 Moens, L., Vanfleteren, J., Van de Peer, Y., Peeters, K., Kapp, O., Czeluzniak, J., Goodman, M., Blaxter, M., and Vinogradov, S. (1996) Globins in nonvertebrate species: Dispersal by horizontal gene transfer and evolution of the structure-function relationships. Molecular Biology and Evolution 13: 324-333 Blaxter ML (1995) The Filarial Genome Project. Parasitology Today 11: 811-812. Tree TIM, AJ Gillespie, KJ Shepley, ML Blaxter, RS Tuan & JE Bradley (1995) Characterisation of an immunodominant glycoprotein antigen of Onchocerca volvulus with homologues in other filarial nematodes and Caenorhabditis elegans. Mol. Biochem. Parasitol. 69: 185-195. Gems DG, CJ Ferguson, BD Robertson, R Nieves, AP Page, ML Blaxter & RM Maizels (1995) An abundant trans-spliced mRNA from Toxocara canis infective larvae encodes a 26-kDa protein with homology to phosphatidylethanolamine binding proteins. J. Biol. Chem. 270: 18517-18522. Blaxter ML, L Ingram & S Tweedie (1994) Sequence, expression and evolution of the globins of the nematode Nippostrongylus brasiliensis. Mol. Biochem. Parasitol. 68: 1-14. Blaxter ML, J Vanfleteren, J Xia & L Moens (1994) Structural characterisation of an Ascaris myoglobin. J. Biol. Chem. 269: 30181-30186. Vanfleteren JR, ML Blaxter, SAR Tweedie, C Trotman, L Lu, M-L Van Heuwaert & L Moens (1994) Molecular genealogy of some nematode taxa as based on cytochrome c and globin amino acid sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 3: 92-101. |