Edward Marcotte is a
professor
Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...
of
biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...
at
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
, working in
genetics
Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...
,
proteomics, and
bioinformatics.
Marcotte is an example of a
computational biologist who also relies on
experiment
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into Causality, cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome oc ...
s to validate bioinformatics-based predictions.
Education and positions
Marcotte's undergraduate education was at
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
, where he received a B.S. in
Microbiology in 1990. He received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from
The University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
in 1995, and did his postdoctoral work both at UT Austin and at
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California S ...
with Professor
David Eisenberg. Marcotte has been a professor at UT Austin since 2001.
Research
Marcotte's major research contributions are in the areas of bioinformatics, proteomics,
systems biology, and
synthetic biology
Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.
It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad ran ...
.
Bioinformatics and systems biology
In early work, Marcotte and colleagues created the first genome-scale map of functional links among proteins in any complex organism (the yeast
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
''Saccharomyces cerevisiae'' () (brewer's yeast or baker's yeast) is a species of yeast (single-celled fungus microorganisms). The species has been instrumental in winemaking, baking, and brewing since ancient times. It is believed to have b ...
), an approach that allowed them to predict the function to more than half of all uncharacterized yeast proteins.
Marcotte also developed several methods of identifying functional interactions between proteins, including
phylogenetic profiling,
Rosetta Stone gene fusion, mRNA coexpression,
and mirror tree approaches.
In 2010, Marcotte and colleagues identified an
algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specifications for performing ...
for identifying cases of
deep homology
In evolutionary developmental biology, the concept of deep homology is used to describe cases where growth and differentiation processes are governed by genetic mechanisms that are homologous and deeply conserved across a wide range of spec ...
based on phenotype.
Proteomics
In the field of proteomics, Marcotte's contributions include developing early versions of the human protein interaction network
and mapping of >7,000 human protein interactions. Marcotte and colleagues developed the spotted cell microarray technique for high-throughput measurement of protein expression, subcellular location, and function,
developed algorithms for analyzing mass spectrometry data, started an open access database for mass spectrometry proteomics data, and developed the APEX method for absolute protein quantification on a proteome-wide scale. Using APEX, Marcotte and colleagues demonstrated that protein abundance in a lower eukaryote is predominantly determined by mRNA levels, while human protein abundances are determined roughly equally by transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation.
External links
Marcotte Lab
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Marcotte, Edward
American biochemists
Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)