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Doctor Zhemin Zhou

Job Title
Senior Research Fellow
Department
WMS - Biomedical Sciences
Phone
024 7655 1921
Research Interests

One basic question for bacterial pathogen is how and when they emerged. Large scale population genomic analyses are required to answer this question. My scientific interests are the population genetics and genomics of bacterial pathogens, as well as the development of related bioinformatic tools. I used comparative genomics of 73 S. enterica serovar Agona to show that it evolved 80 yrs ago, and that the genomic diversity of the core genome reflects the accumulation of a few neutral, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Changes in the pan-genome were more dramatic, largely reflecting acquisition or deletion of selfish mobile DNA, which resulted in identical PFGE patterns between unrelated isolates. My previous publications elucidated the genetic variations in the step-wise evolution of important human pathogen Escherichia coli O157 and the emergence of 7th pandemics of Vibrio cholera by multiple genomic comparisons.

Biography

I graduated from the Nankai University in China with a BSc in Biotechnology. For my interests in informatics and evolution, I spent five years in the lab of Lei Wang in the same university and completed my PhD, investigating the genomics of Vibrio cholera, Escherichia coli and dozens of other species. After that, I spent one year as a lecturer in the Nankai University and decided to join the lab of Mark Achtman in University College Cork. In May 2013 I joined the Division of Microbiology and Infection, Warwick Medical School as a Research Fellow.

Title Funder Award start Award end
Wellcome Trust Investigator Award - Deep evolutionary history of bacterial pathogens Wellcome Trust 01 Sep 2016 31 Aug 2021
BBSRC / Achten / EnteroBase: A Powerful, User-Friendly Online Resource for Analyzing and Visualizing Genomic Variation within Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica BBSRC 01 Apr 2014 15 Oct 2019