Andrew J. Roger is a Canadian-Australian

molecular biologist Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

and evolutionary

bioinformatician Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combine ...

. He is currently a professor in th
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
at

Dalhousie University Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the fou ...

and was the founding director (from 2008-2017) of the inter-departmental Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics (CGEB).

Education and Career

Roger received his

B.Sc A Bachelor of Science (BS, BSc, SB, or ScB; from the Latin ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for programs that generally last three to five years. The first university to admit a student to the degree of Bachelor of Science was the University of ...

from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a public university, public research university with campuses near Vancouver and in Kelowna, British Columbia. Established in 1908, it is British Columbia's oldest university. The university ranks a ...

and his

PhD PHD or PhD may refer to: * Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), an academic qualification Entertainment * '' PhD: Phantasy Degree'', a Korean comic series * ''Piled Higher and Deeper'', a web comic * Ph.D. (band), a 1980s British group ** Ph.D. (Ph.D. albu ...

from Dalhousie University. Roger was elected as a fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; french: Société royale du Canada, SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bil ...

in 2012http://www.rsc-src.ca/en/search-fellows?keywords_44=&first_name=Andrew&last_name=Roger&display_name=Dalhousie+University&election_year_21=&academy_25=All&division_24=All&discipline_23=All&is_deceased=0&sort_by=last_name&sort_order=ASC for his work on eukaryotic superkingdoms, his work on the evolution of mitochondrion-related organelles in anaerobic protists and his contribution to investigating and improving phylogenetic models

Research

A former student of

Ford Doolittle W. Ford Doolittle (born February 21, 1942, in Urbana, Illinois) is an evolutionary and molecular biologist. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Norwegian Academy of Science and ...

, Roger's research focuses on the 'deep'

Tree of Life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythological, religious, and philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The Assyrian Sacred Tree: A History ...

, especially determining the super-kingdom-level relationships amongst eukaryotes and clarifying the nature of th
last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA)
Using phylogenomic approaches Roger's group elucidates the patterns and process of genome evolution in eukaryotic microbes. His research also addresses the evolutionary origin of

mitochondria A mitochondrion (; ) is an organelle found in the Cell (biology), cells of most Eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and Fungus, fungi. Mitochondria have a double lipid bilayer, membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosi ...

hydrogenosome A hydrogenosome is a membrane-enclosed organelle found in some anaerobic ciliates, flagellates, and fungi. Hydrogenosomes are highly variable organelles that have presumably evolved from protomitochondria to produce molecular hydrogen and ATP in ...

s, and

mitosome A mitosome is an organelle found in some unicellular eukaryotic organisms, like in members of the supergroup Excavata. The mitosome was found and named in 1999, and its function has not yet been well characterized. It was termed a ''crypton'' by ...

s, the role of lateral (horizontal) gene transfer in eukaryotic genome evolution and how anaerobic parasites evolved from free-living ancestors.

Selected publications

*Roger, A.J. and Susko, E. (2018) Molecular clocks provide little information to date methanogenic archaea. ''Nature Ecol. Evol.'' 2: 1676-1677. *Muñoz-Gómez, S.A., Hess, S., Burger, G., Lang, B.F., Susko, E., Slamovits, C.H. and Roger, A.J. (2019) An updated phylogeny of the Alphaproteobacteria reveals that the parasitic Rickettsiales and *Holosporales have independent origins. ''eLife'', Feb. 25; 8. pii: e42535. *Hess, S., Eme, L., Roger, A.J. and Simpson, A.G.B. (2019) A natural toroidal microswimmer propelled by a rotary eukaryotic flagellum. ''Nature Microbiol.'' 4:1620-1626. *Susko E. and Roger, A.J. (2019) On the use of information criteria for model selection in phylogenetics. ''Mol. Biol.'' Evol., Nov. 5 *Susko E, Roger AJ., (2013) Problems with estimation of ancestral frequencies under stationary models. ''Syst Biol.'' 62(2):330-8 *Stairs, C.W., Roger, A.J. and Hampl, V. , (2011) Eukaryotic pyruvate formate lyase and its activating enzyme were acquired laterally from a firmicute. ''Mol. Biol. Evol.'' 28:2087-2099

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roger, Andrew J. Australian biologists Canadian molecular biologists Dalhousie University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) Living people