Lee H. Pratt

Lee Pratt, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus

email:leepratt@uga.edu; telephone: +1(706)542-1841

Marie-Michèle Cordonnier-Pratt, Senior Research Scientist

email:mmpratt@uga.edu; telephone: +1(706)542-1860

From 1998 to 2006 we developed a genomics/bioinformatics research program with two major outcomes.  The first is represented by the data, database, and data mining/visualization tools presented at this web site.  The second arises from the retirement of one of us (Lee) in April 2006.  His retirement led to closing of the research laboratory and a move of its instrumentation, informatics, and expertise to a new home under the auspices of the UGA Office of the Vice President for Research. 

Former research program.  Our focus had been on gene discovery, transcriptome characterization, and the requisite supporting bioinformatics.  Major projects included completion of large EST projects for both sorghum and loblolly pine, and smaller ones for horse, human  (embryonic stem cells) and Ichthyophthirius (a ciliate fish pathogen commonly known as Ich).  cDNA microarrays were also developed for both sorghum and pine.  A small project with rice, completed prior to complete sequencing of the rice genome, involved sequencing three BACs, each containing a different member of the phytochrome gene family.

To support these various wet-lab activities, a comprehensive Oracle database was created, together with the web-based interfaces necessary for its administration and for data mining and visualization, and with pipelines, scripts, etc., required to populate it with a wide variety of metadata deriving from the DNA sequences it contains.  The database, subsequently christened MAGIC DB (Modular Approach to a Genomic, Integrated, and Comprehensive DataBase), and a few of its associated data mining and visualization tools are an integral part of this website.  All sequences, annotations, contig assemblies, SNPs, and so on, can be viewed and downloaded from this site.  [Ichthyophthirius data should be available at http://fungen.org by the middle of May, 2007.]

Objectives at our new home.  Our objectives at this new home include making everything we have developed, including our expertise, available to the entire UGA community.  In the wet-lab we provide modestly high throughput DNA sequencing (up to about 100,000 reads/year) and capillary sequence-based genotyping.  Bioinformatics support derives from availability of MAGIC DB and its associated interfaces and pipelines, and our assistance in modifying them to meet the needs of a research program.  Please contact one of us if you would like to learn whether and how we might be able to help you, or visit the new web site at http://www.ors.uga.edu/lgb.

Mailing Address:
Laboratory for Genomics and Bioinformatics
110 Riverbend North, Room 161
University of Georgia
Athens, GA 30602