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

  • Reactome and the Gene Ontology: digital convergence of data resources. Bioinformatics. 2021 Oct 11; 37(19):3343-3348.. View in PubMed
  • Gene Ontology representation for transcription factor functions. Biochim Biophys Acta Gene Regul Mech. 2021 Nov-Dec; 1864(11-12):194752.. View in PubMed
  • Ten Years of Collaborative Progress in the Quest for Orthologs. Mol Biol Evol. 2021 07 29; 38(8):3033-3045.. View in PubMed
  • The Minimum Information about a Molecular Interaction CAusal STatement (MI2CAST). Bioinformatics. 2021 04 05; 36(24):5712-5718.. View in PubMed
  • Bayesian parameter estimation for automatic annotation of gene functions using observational data and phylogenetic trees. PLoS Comput Biol. 2021 02; 17(2):e1007948.. View in PubMed
  • The InterPro protein families and domains database: 20 years on. Nucleic Acids Res. 2021 01 08; 49(D1):D344-D354.. View in PubMed
  • PANTHER version 16: a revised family classification, tree-based classification tool, enhancer regions and extensive API. Nucleic Acids Res. 2021 01 08; 49(D1):D394-D403.. View in PubMed
  • PhyloGenes: An online phylogenetics and functional genomics resource for plant gene function inference. Plant Direct. 2020 Dec; 4(12):e00293.. View in PubMed
  • PEREGRINE: A genome-wide prediction of enhancer to gene relationships supported by experimental evidence. PLoS One. 2020; 15(12):e0243791.. View in PubMed
  • The Quest for Orthologs benchmark service and consensus calls in 2020. Nucleic Acids Res. 2020 07 02; 48(W1):W538-W545.. View in PubMed