Mohamed A. Noor, Professor  

Mohamed A. Noor

Education:
PhD, University of Chicago, 1996
BS, College of William and Mary, 1992

Office Location: FFSC: 4214
Office Phone: 919-613-8156
Email Address: noor@duke.edu
Web Page: http://www.biology.duke.edu/noorlab/Noorlab.html

Specialties:
Evolution
Genetics
Genomics

Research Categories: Speciation and evolutionary genetics, recombination

Research Description: One of the greatest unsolved questions in biology is how continuous processes of evolutionary change produce the discontinuous groups known as species. My research has focused on understanding the processes that cause the evolution of barriers to gene exchange between diverging species, particularly hybrid sterility and species mating discrimination. My approaches are primarily classical or molecular genetic using Drosophila species as model organisms. Using these approaches, we have dissected the genetic basis of these barriers to gene exchange using molecular markers and QTL mapping methodologies or gene expression approaches. The recent availability of multiple whole-genome sequences (both publicly and those we have obtained ourselves) has dramatically enhanced the scope of progress we can make. In addition to questions in speciation, we have recently been studying the effects of fine-scale recombination heterogeneity on various evolutionary parameters including nucleotide diversity, divergence, and codon bias. See my lab web page for more information.

Recent Publications   (More Publications)   (search)

  1. MAF Noor, SM Bennett, Islands of speciation or mirages in the desert? Examining the role of restricted recombination in maintaining species., Heredity, England, vol. 103 no. 6 (December, 2009), pp. 439-444  [abs].
  2. SM Bennett, MAF Noor, Molecular evolution of a Drosophila homolog of human BRCA2., Genetica, vol. 137 no. 2 (November, 2009), pp. 213-219  [abs].
  3. AS Chang, MAF Noor, Epistasis modifies the dominance of loci causing hybrid male sterility in the Drosophila pseudoobscura species group, Evolution (August, Accepted, 2009)  [abs].
  4. DA Rasmussen, MAF Noor, What can you do with 0.1x genome coverage? A case study based on a genome survey of the scuttle fly Megaselia scalaris (Phoridae)., BMC Genomics, vol. 10 (August, 2009), pp. 382  [abs].
  5. RJ Kulathinal, LS Stevison, MAF Noor, The genomics of speciation in Drosophila: diversity, divergence, and introgression estimated using low-coverage genome sequencing., PLoS Genetics, vol. 5 no. 7 (July, 2009), pp. e1000550  [abs].

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