Research Interests and Accomplishments

Dr. Jeremy Selengut is a Staff Scientist III at the J. Craig Venter Institute (JCVI). He specializes in Comparative Genomics and the development of algorithms for the analysis and identification of systems of genes which represent conserved biological processes. He leads the Genome Properties project, through which a collection of rules based largely on Hidden Markov Models (HMMs) determines the presence or absence of a wide variety of metabolic pathways, molecular complexes, transport and secretion systems, selfish genetic elements, regulatory circuits, and so on. Systems described in Genome Properties include both extractions from the scientific literature and extensions or new results from comparative genomics, such as definition of the multiple subtypes for CRISPR systems. He is one of two major contributors TIGRFAMs, a database of HMM-based protein family definitions for use in automated annotation systems. Dr. Selengut co-developed the Partial Phylogenetic Profiling algorithm with Dr. Daniel Haft.

Dr. Selengut majored in chemistry as an undergraduate at Brown University where he did research on the structure and biosynthesis of bacterial natural products in the laboratory of Dr. David Cane. He earned his doctorate in Chemistry from MIT in the laboratory of the late Dr. Bill Orme-Johnson, for work on P450 enzymes, the synthesis of steroidal derivatives and the identification of proteins involved in kidney stones. Dr. Selengut did post-doctoral work jointly at MIT and in the department of Urology at the Massachusetts General Hospital under Dr. Stephen Dretler and briefly with Dr. Peter Lansbury, studying Alzheimer's disease proteins at Harvard Medical School.

Dr. Selengut spent a five-year training stint in Earl Stadtman's Laboratory of Biochemistry of NIH's National Heart Lung and Blood Institute under the direct supervision of Dr. Rodney Levine. While there he accidentally discovered a new phosphatase enzyme of the Haloacid Dehalogenase superfamily and discovered the need for bioinformatics in his life. Bioinformatics led to the leveraging of his discovery to the far more important realization that the EYA protein central to eye (and other tissue) development was also a member of this new class of enzyme and likely to exert its nuclear regulatory functions via its phosphatase activity on other proteins. This final change of research focus led to his being hired by the former TIGR, now JCVI in 2002. Besides the papers listed below, he has contributed to over a dozen genome analysis papers published at the Institute.

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