Olga Zhaxybayeva
Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science
Simons Foundation Investigator in Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems
My research interests are to understand how microbes change over time. Recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies brought us an avalanche of data: thousands of genomes and terabases of environmental DNA (metagenomes). I mine these data sets to assess the impact of horizontal gene transfer on microbial populations, find new ways to characterize microbial communities, and track down genomic signatures of microbial adaptations.
Contact
Department(s)
Biological Sciences
Education
- B.S. in Applied Mathematics, Kazakh State University, Almaty, Kazakhstan (1997)
- Ph.D. in Genetics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA (2004)
- Postdoctoral Training in Microbial Evolution, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada (2005-2009)
- Certificate in Computer Graphics, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, NS, Canada (2006-2007)
Selected Publications
Roman Kogay, Sonja Koppenhöfer, J Thomas Beatty, Jens H Kuhn, Andrew S Lang, Olga Zhaxybayeva (2022): "Formal recognition and classification of gene transfer agents as viriforms." Virus Evolution, 8: veac100.
Roman Kogay and Olga Zhaxybayeva (2022): "Selection for Translational Efficiency in Genes Associated with Alphaproteobacterial Gene Transfer Agents." mSystems, 7: e0089222.
Zhengshuang Hua, Matthew Ouellette, Andrea M. Makkay, R. Thane Papke, and Olga Zhaxybayeva (2021): "Nutrient supplementation experiments with saltern microbial communities implicate utilization of DNA as a source of phosphorus", ISME Journal, 15: 2843-2864
Emma S. Esterman, Yuri I. Wolf, Roman Kogay, Eugene V. Koonin, and Olga Zhaxybayeva (2021): "Evolution of DNA packaging in gene transfer agents", Virus Evolution, 7: veab015.