Jason Stajich
Jason Stajich Email: jaso…@ucr.edu
Assistant Professor, Plant Pathology and Microbiology
I am interested in the evolution of fungi and study this using comparative, computational, and experimental tools. In particular using genome sequence information combined with phylogenetic inference and molecular evolution to understand how fungi adapt and evolve.
We are currently focused on projects that study the mold Neurospora crassa, the mushroom Coprinopsis cinerea, and the frog killing chytrid fungus Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis. I have also worked on human pathogenic fungi such as Coccidioides and Cryptococcus neoformans.
Fundamentally I am interested in the evolution of multicellular forms, the cell wall, and regulation of development in fungi and how innovations in the cell wall and dimorphism impact interactions between hosts and pathogenic fungi.
I also am focused on building tools for comparative and computational analyses of genomes including work on the BioPerl and Gbrowse projects and the development of open source software for bioinformatics and life sciences research through the Open Bioinformatics Foundation.
The lab is also focused on the development of databases for fungal genome data to make the genome and functional information more available. I also blog about interesting findings in fungal, microbial, and genome research and share protocols and coordinate projects through a wiki site.
