Chun Liang
, Assistant Professor
Webpage:http://www.conifergdb.org
Ph.D.
(1999) University of Georgia
Areas of Expertise
Bioinformatics; plant genomics, proteomics and metabolomics; biological databases and data mining
Research Interests
My general research interests primarily focus on use of various computational tools, including development of new algorithms, software and databases, to address biological questions related with plant genomics, proteomics and metabolomics at different levels from individuals, populations, to ecosystems. While emphasizing traditional and experimental biology, my research is focused on computational biology by conducting biological experimentations in silico.
Currently, I am interested in transcriptome analysis for novel gene discovery and gene expression profiling study in plants using various bioinformatics solutions. The ongoing projects center in data processing, data integration and data mining for Expressed Sequence Tags (ESTs) and cDNA-based microarray. Particularly, I want to understand how gene expression profile changes in response to different genotypes, environmental conditions and developmental stages. Also, I am developing new algorithms, database infrastructures and software systems for clustering ESTs and exploring various EST features, including 3’ and 5’ UTR, SSR, SNP, protein coding domains, splice variants and so on.
Selected Publications
Liang, C., Liu, L. and Q.Q. Li (2009) WebGMAP: a web service for mapping and aligning cDNA sequences to genomes. Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkp389.
Liang, C., Liu, Y., Liu, L., Davis, A.C., Shen, Y. and Q.Q. Li (2008) ESTs with cDNA termini - previously overlooked resources for gene annotation and transcriptome exploration in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Genetics, 179:83-93.
Shen, Y., Y. Liu, L. Liu, Liang, C. and Q. Q. Li (2008) Unique features of nuclear mRNA poly(A) signals and alternative polyadenylation in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
Genetics, 179:167-176.
Liang, C., Wang, G., Liu, L., Ji, G., Fang, L., Liu, Y., Carter, K., Webb, J.S., Dean,
J.F. ConiferEST: an integrated bioinformatics system for data reprocessing
and mining of conifer expressed sequence tags (ESTs). BMC Genomics 2007,
8:134.
Conner, J. A., Goel, S., Gunawan, G., Cordonnier-Pratt, M-M, Johnson, V. E., Liang, C., Wang, H., Pratt, L. H., Mullet, J. E., DeBarry, J., Yang, L., Bennetzen, J. L., Klein, P. E., and P. Ozias-Akins (2008) Sequence Analysis of Bacterial Artificial Chromosome Clones from the Apospory-Specific Genomic Region of Pennisetum and Cenchrus. Plant Physiology, 147: 1396-1411.
Liang, C., Wang, G., Liu, L., Ji, G., Liu, Y., Chen, J., Webb, J.S., Reese, G., and Dean, J.F. (2007) WebTraceMiner: a web service for processing and mining EST sequence trace files. Nucleic Acids Research, doi:10.1093/nar/gkm299.
Liang, C., Sun, F., Wang, H., Qu, J., Freeman, R.M., Jr., Pratt, L.H., Cordonnier-Pratt, M.M. 2006. MAGIC-SPP: a database-driven DNA sequence processing package with associated management tools. BMC Bioinformatics, 7:115.