Paul D Thomas, PhD

Professor of Population and Public Health Sciences and Quantitative and Computational Biology

Director of the Gene Sequence, Function, and Health Laboratory Initiative

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Overview

Trained in computational biology (specifically computational protein folding using statistical-mechanics based techniques with Dr. Ken Dill), Dr. Thomas turned to genomics as soon as the Human Genome Project began pilot work in 1995. The culmination of this early work was the publication of the paper describing the sequencing of the first human genome in 2001; Dr. Thomas led the work described in the 10-page section of the paper entitled “An overview of the predicted protein coding genes in the human genome.” Since that time, Dr. Thomas’s group has continued to innovate in the area of computational analysis of genomic data, with an emphasis on gene function and evolution. In addition to founding and continuing development on the PANTHER phylogenomics project, Dr. Thomas is a director of the Gene Ontology Consortium, one of the largest and best-known bioinformatics projects in the world.

Awards

  • Thomson-Reuters/Clarivate: Highly Cited Researcher (Biology and Biochemistry), 2014
     – 2020

Research Funding

  • Gene Ontology Consortium and Knowledgebase
    NIH · U24HG012212 · Jun 1, 2022 – Mar 31, 2027 · Role: Principal Investigator
  • Reactome and the Gene Ontology: Digital pathway convergence for core data resources
    NIH · U24HG011851 · Sep 24, 2021 – Jun 30, 2026 · Role: Co-Principal Investigator
  • EcoliHub2.0: A next-generation E. coli model organism resource (SRI Proposal ECU
    NIH · U24GM088849 · Aug 1, 2009 – Jul 31, 2015 · Role: Principal Investigator
  • Development and Maintenance of PANTHER Software
    NIH · R01GM081084 · Apr 1, 2008 – Mar 31, 2012 · Role: Principal Investigator
  • Gene Ontology Consortium
    NIH · U41HG002273 · Jan 19, 2001 – Feb 28, 2022 · Role: Principal Investigator

Publications

  • Updates to the Alliance of Genome Resources central infrastructure. Genetics. 2024 05 07; 227(1).. View in PubMed
  • AI and the democratization of knowledge. Sci Data. 2024 Mar 05; 11(1):268.. View in PubMed
  • Updates to the Alliance of Genome Resources Central Infrastructure Alliance of Genome Resources Consortium. bioRxiv. 2023 Nov 22.. View in PubMed
  • SARS-CoV-2 viral variants can rapidly be identified for clinical decision making and population surveillance using a high-throughput digital droplet PCR assay. Sci Rep. 2023 05 10; 13(1):7612.. View in PubMed
  • The Gene Ontology knowledgebase in 2023. Genetics. 2023 05 04; 224(1).. View in PubMed
  • InterPro in 2022. Nucleic Acids Res. 2023 01 06; 51(D1):D418-D427.. View in PubMed
  • A roadmap for the functional annotation of protein families: a community perspective. Database (Oxford). 2022 08 12; 2022.. View in PubMed
  • The Quest for Orthologs orthology benchmark service in 2022. Nucleic Acids Res. 2022 07 05; 50(W1):W623-W632.. View in PubMed
  • Annotation Query (AnnoQ): an integrated and interactive platform for large-scale genetic variant annotation. Nucleic Acids Res. 2022 07 05; 50(W1):W57-W65.. View in PubMed
  • PANTHER: Making genome-scale phylogenetics accessible to all. Protein Sci. 2022 01; 31(1):8-22.. View in PubMed