Olga Zhaxybayeva

Academic Appointments

Associate Professor of Biological Sciences
Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science
Simons Foundation Investigator in Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems
2018-19 Douglas C. Floren Fellow

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.

Personal Website
[email protected]
333 Life Sciences Center
HB 6044
Department:
Biological Sciences
Education:
B.S. in Applied Mathematics, Kazakh State University
Ph.D. in Genetics, University of Connecticut
Postdoctroal Training in Microbial Evolution, Dalhousie University
Certificate in Computer Graphics, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design

Courses

Related Links

Selected Publications

Migun Shakya, Shannon M. Soucy, and Olga Zhaxybayeva (2017) "Insights into Origin and Evolution of alpha-proteobacterial Gene Transfer Agents", Virus Evolution, 3: vex036.

Stephen M. J. Pollo, Abigail A. Adebusuy, Timothy J. Straub, Julia M. Foght, Olga Zhaxybayeva, Camilla L. Nesbo (2017) "Genomic insights and temperature-dependent transcriptional responses of Kosmotoga olearia, a deep-biosphere bacterium that can grow from 20C to 79C", Extremophiles, 21:963-979.

Straub TJ and Zhaxybayeva O (2017) "A null model for microbial diversification", Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 114: E5414-E5423.

Lori R. Shapiro, Erin D. Scully, Timothy J. Straub, Jihye Park, Andrew G. Stephenson, Gwyn Beattie, Mark Gleason, Roberto Kolter, Miguel C. Coelho, Consuelo M. DeMoraes, Mark C. Mescher, and Olga Zhaxybayeva (2016) "Horizontal Gene Acquisitions, Mobile Element Proliferation, and Genome Decay in the Host-Restricted Plant Pathogen Erwinia tracheiphila", Genome Biol Evol., 8:649-664.

Pollo SM, Zhaxybayeva O, Nesbo CL (2015) "Insights into thermoadaptation and the evolution of mesophily from the bacterial phylum Thermotogae." Can J Microbiol., 61:655-70.

Lossouarn J, Nesbo CL, Mercier C, Zhaxybayeva O, Johnson MS, Charchuck R, Farasin J, Bienvenu N, Baudoux AC, Michoud G, Jebbar M, Geslin C. (2015) "Menage a trois": a selfish genetic element uses a virus to propagate within Thermotogales. Environ Microbiol., 17:3278-88.

Nesbo CL, S Swithers K, Dahle H, Haverkamp TH, Birkeland NK, Sokolova T, Kublanov I, Zhaxybayeva O. (2015) "Evidence for extensive gene flow and Thermotoga subpopulations in subsurface and marine environments." ISME J., 9:1532-42.

Complete list of publications is available at http://www.dartmouth.edu/~ecglab/pubs.html

Last updated: February 27, 2020