Search
About Thomas Ishoey
Thomas is a passionate and innovative technologist with expertise in early-stage technology development and commercialization. He has held several C-level and senior management positions and demonstrated turn-around and team building capability across multiple disciplines.
Scientist Spotlight: Lauren Oldfield
Since high school, Lauren Oldfield, PhD found that science was her calling. It started with a love of reading encouraged by her mom and grandmother, both avid readers, and weekly trips to the public library. Books by Michael Crichton and Richard Preston were staples in her grandmother’s collection. After devouring “The Hot Zone,” a fictionalized account of an almost outbreak of Ebola in the United States, microbiology and the study of infectious diseases became her passion....
Genome Solver Annotation Workshops
The Human Microbiome Project (HMP) has created a wealth of new questions for scientists. However, the current rate of microbial DNA sequencing far outpaces the ability of experts to analyze the genomes and metagenomes that have resulted from the HMP, creating a need for additional hands and minds to deal with the myriad of questions. This need in turn creates an opportunity for undergraduates to get involved in research on the HMP. Through the National Science Foundation (NSF) TUES...
Sequencing and analysis of globally obtained human parainfluenza viruses 1 and 3 genomes.
Human Parainfluenza viruses (HPIV) type 1 and 3 are important causes of respiratory tract infections in young children globally. HPIV infections do not confer complete protective immunity so reinfections occur throughout life. Since no effective vaccine is available for the two virus subtypes, comprehensive understanding of HPIV-1 and HPIV-3 genetic and epidemic features is important for diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of HPIV-1 and HPIV-3 infections. Relatively few whole genome...
Back To Sampling In The Black Sea and Rough Rough Weather
September 9th 2010 Hello everyone! I know it has been a long time since the last post from Sorcerer II. Let me take the time to explain…………..in early August we sailed to Greece. As I have mentioned in the past we have permits with each country to collect samples, these permits have certain time windows and other country specific stipulations. Once stipulation on the Greek permit was that for each Greek sample collected we must have a Greek collaborator onboard Sorcerer II. One...
10 Days of Italian Sampling Coming to a Close
Tuesday July 20th On July 16th we finished our Straits of Messina sampling and headed into the Ionian and Adriatic Seas. We sailed overnight and collected our Ionian Sea sample, we continued northeast and on July 18th we collected our Adriatic Sea sample. After we collected the Adriatic Sea sample we turned around and headed back to the Straits of Messina to resample the south entrance on July 19th. We proceeded through the straits...
Genomic insights to SAR86, an abundant and uncultivated marine bacterial lineage.
Bacteria in the 16S rRNA clade SAR86 are among the most abundant uncultivated constituents of microbial assemblages in the surface ocean for which little genomic information is currently available. Bioinformatic techniques were used to assemble two nearly complete genomes from marine metagenomes and single-cell sequencing provided two more partial genomes. Recruitment of metagenomic data shows that these SAR86 genomes substantially increase our knowledge of non-photosynthetic bacteria in...
Genetic variation in an individual human exome.
There is much interest in characterizing the variation in a human individual, because this may elucidate what contributes significantly to a person's phenotype, thereby enabling personalized genomics. We focus here on the variants in a person's 'exome,' which is the set of exons in a genome, because the exome is believed to harbor much of the functional variation. We provide an analysis of the approximately 12,500 variants that affect the protein coding portion of an individual's genome. We...
Research Schooner Tara in San Diego Calls for Innovative Citizen Science and Oceanography 2.0
Sampling of ocean life is hindered by the extreme cost, limited logistical flexibility, and high carbon footprint of classical oceanographic research vessels. The Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) expedition aboard the Sorcerer II yacht (2004-2010) paved the way for a new brand of oceanography based on the use of sailing boats to obtain samples suitable for DNA sequencing analyses of plankton. The Tara Oceans Expedition (2009-2013) extended this concept and sampled eco-morpho-genetic data from...
Structural and functional diversity of the microbial kinome.
The eukaryotic protein kinase (ePK) domain mediates the majority of signaling and coordination of complex events in eukaryotes. By contrast, most bacterial signaling is thought to occur through structurally unrelated histidine kinases, though some ePK-like kinases (ELKs) and small molecule kinases are known in bacteria. Our analysis of the Global Ocean Sampling (GOS) dataset reveals that ELKs are as prevalent as histidine kinases and may play an equally important role in prokaryotic...