GLOOR, Gregory
Professor
Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry
Department of Biochemistry
B.Sc. (Hons) (University of Western Ontario): 1983
Ph.D. (Univeristy of Western Ontario): 1988
Post-Doctoral (University of Wisconsin-Madison): 1990
Research Summary:
Look here for microbiota analysis using the Illumina multiplex method or the Ion Torrent method.This service is offered through the London Regional Genomics Centre
The Vaginal Microbiome
I am examining the vaginal microbiome in a long-term collaboration with Gregor Reid from the Lawson Health Research Institute. The number and type of bacteria in the vagina have a profound effect on women's health and their risk of contracting or transmitting STDs. We are using the Illumina, 454 and ABI-Solid high-throughput sequencing methods to determine which organisms are associated with health and disease, what genes they are using in each state and to determine the genome sequences of various lactobacilli that are of use as probiotics. The set of shell, perl and C programs to extract the information from paired-end Illumina sequencing reactions is here.
Protein Sequence Coevolution
We are using variations on mutual information to identify protein active sites. We have found that active sites (binding sites, catalytic sites, domain interfaces) are unexpectedly rich in mutual information. This suggests that the pairs of residues in these interfaces evolve coordinately. We have refined and extended the methodology and can now reliably detect three times as many coevolving positions as our first method. In concert with Andrew Fernandes and Lindi Wahl, we are working on next-generation methods of detecting covariation.
We are now directly testing the hypothesis that coevolving positions are important for structure and function using mutagensis. Positions that coevolve in candidate genes are being mutated and then assayed biochemically and genetically to assess their function.
We believe that the ability to accurately identify coevolving positions in proteins will have broad clinical and fundamental applications, on par with our current abilities to identify and use conserved positions in protein families.
Supplementary data for the 2005 papers in Biochemistry and Bioinformatics
Recent Publications and Manuscripts:
1. Macphee R, Miller WL, Gloor G, McCormick JK, Burton J, Reid G. , "Influence of vaginal microbiota on toxic shock syndrome toxin-1 production by Staphylococcus aureus.", Appl Environ Microbiol., Accepted: 2013-01-11
2. Petrof EO, Gloor GB, Vanner SJ, Weese SJ, Carter D, Daigneault MC, Brown EM, Schroeter K , Allen-Veroce EA , "Stool substitute transplant therapy for the eradication of Clostridium difficile infection: ‘RePOOPulating’ the gut", Microbiome, Accepted: 2013-01-09
3. Kvas S, Gloor GB, Brandl CJ. , "Loss of nonsense mediated decay suppresses mutations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae TRA1.", BMC Genetics, Submitted: 2012-03-22.
4. Genereaux J, Kvas S, Dobransky D, Karagiannis J, Gloor GB, Brandl CJ , "Genetic evidence links the ASTRA protein chaperone component Tti2 to the SAGA transcription factor Tra1.", Genetics, 191, 3, [765], (2012).
5. Macklaim JM, Cohen CR, Donders G, Gloor GB, Hill JE, Parham GP, Ravel J, Spear G, van de Wijgert J, Reid G. , "Exploring a road map to counter misconceptions about the cervicovaginal microbiome and disease.", Reprod Sc, 19, 11, [1154], (2012).
6. Dickson RJ, Gloor GB , "Protein sequence alignment analysis by local covariation: coevolution statistics detect benchmark alignment errors.", PLoS ONE, 7, 6, [37645], (2012).
7. Allen-Vercoe E, Reid G, Viner N, Gloor GB, Hota S, Kim P, Lee C, O\'Doherty K, Vanner SJ, Weese JS, Petrof EO. , "A Canadian Working Group report on fecal microbial therapy: microbial ecosystems therapeutics.", Can J Gastroenterol., 26, 7, [457], (2012).
8. Audy EO, Claud EC, Gloor GB, Allen-Vercoe E. , "Microbial ecosystems therapeutics: a new paradigm in medicine?", Benef Microbes, Accepted: 2012-12-20
9. Reid, G, Younes, J, van der Mei, HC, Gloor, GB, Knight, R., Busscher, H J , "Microbiota restoration: natural and supplemented recovery of human microbial communities.", Nature Review Microbiology, 9, 1, [27-38], (2011).
10. Macklaim JM, Gloor GB, Anukam KC, Cribby S, G. Reid , "At the crossroads of vaginal health and disease, the genome sequence of Lactobacillus iners AB-1 ", Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA , 108, 1, [4688-95], (2011).
11. James S. Duncan, Jacob P. Turowec, Kelly E. Duncan, Greg Vilk, Chenggang Wu, Bernhard Lüscher, Shawn S.-C. Li, Greg B. Gloor, and David W. Litchfield , "A Peptide-Based Target Screen Implicates the Protein Kinase CK2 in the Global Regulation of Caspase Signaling", Science Signalling, 4, 172, [ra30], (2011).
12. Turowec JP, Duncan JS, Gloor GB, Litchfield DW. , "Regulation of caspase pathways by protein kinase CK2: identification of proteins with overlapping CK2 and caspase consensus motifs.", Mol Cell Biochem., Accepted: 2011-07-13
13. Ryo Takeuchi , Abigail Lambert , Amanda Mak , Kyle Jacoby , Russel Dickson , Gregory Gloor , Andrew Scharenberg , David Edgell , Barry Stoddard , "Tapping natural reservoirs of homing endonucleases for targeted gene modification", Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, Accepted: 2011-06-27
14. Hummelen R, Macklaim JM, Bisanz JE, Hammond JA, McMillan A, Vongsa R, Koenig D, Gloor GB, Reid G. , "Vaginal microbiome and epithelial gene array in post-menopausal women with moderate to severe dryness.", PLoS One, 6, 11, [e26602], (2011).
15. Kleinstiver BP, Fernandes AD, Gloor GB and Edgell DR , "A unified genetic, computational and experimental framework identified functionally relevant residues of the homing endonuclease I-BmoI", Nucleic Acids Res., 38, 7, [2411-2427], (2010).
KEYWORDS: Computational Biology, Protein Evolution, Coevolution, Molecular Biology, High throughput sequencing, Genomics,
Molecular genetics
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Contact Info
Department of Biochemistry
MBL,
Rm #: C8
Telephone: 661-2111 x83526
Email: ggloor@uwo.ca
