Research Interests and Accomplishments

Dr. Marcus Jones is a staff scientist within the Infectious Disease group where he specializes in a wide variety of gene expression studies. Dr. Jones is interested in the evolution of antibiotic resistance, the role of small RNAs in the regulation of bacterial gene expression and bacterial in vivo gene expression.  Dr. Jones has performed comparative genomic hybridization studies on a number of bacterial species, and is characterizing mechanisms for antibiotic resistance in several pathogenic bacteria. Dr. Jones has also taken the responsibility for managing a research contract from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory of the Department of Energy for characterizing the transcriptome of Yersinia pestis and Salmonella enterica.

Dr. Jones received his bachelor’s degree at Southern University and A&M College in Baton Rouge, LA in 2000. He received his Ph.D. in Microbiology in 2005 studying in the laboratory of Dr. Martin J. Blaser in The Sackler Institute at New York University School of Medicine, where he characterized the role of quorum-sensing in the regulation of virulence gene expression in Bacillus anthracis. Dr. Jones did his post-doctoral training at The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) from 2005-2006 in the laboratory of Dr. Scott N. Peterson in the Pathogen Functional Genomics Resource Center (PFGRC) prior to joining the JCVI.

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