Education

B.S., Molecular Biology, University of Texas at Austin, 1999
M.S., Bioinformatics, Indiana University Bloomington, 2003
Ph.D., Molecular Cellular and Developmental Biology, Indiana University Bloomington, 2005

Research Interests

• Molecular evolution and comparative genomics of plant mitochondrial, plastid, and nuclear genomes.
• Origin and evolution of novel genomic features, such as genes, introns, and RNA editing.
• Extent and mechanisms of horizontal gene transfer between parasitic plants and their host plants.
• Substitution rate variation across plant genomes and lineages.
• Systematics of major vascular plant lineages, including angiosperms, gymnosperms, ferns, and lycophytes.

Major Project Activities

• Next-gen sequencing of plant mitochondrial, chloroplast, and nuclear genomes and transcriptomes
• Genome and transcriptome assembly and annotation
• Molecular evolutionary and comparative genomics analyses

Publications

Selected Publications from Google Scholar

• Mower JP, Ma PF, Grewe F, Taylor A, Michael TP, VanBuren R, Qiu YL. 2019. Lycophyte plastid genomics: extreme variation in GC, gene, and intron content, and multiple inversions between a direct and inverted orientation of the rRNA repeat. New Phytol 222, 1061–1075.
• Guo W Zhu A, Fan W, Mower JP. 2017. Complete mitochondrial genomes from the ferns Ophioglossum californicum and Psilotum nudum are highly repetitive with the largest organellar introns. New Phytol 213, 391–403.
• Guo W, Grewe F, Fan W, Young GJ, Knoop V, Palmer JD, Mower JP. 2016. Ginkgo and Welwitschia mitogenomes reveal extreme contrasts in gymnosperm mitochondrial evolution. Mol Biol Evol 33, 1448­–1460.
• Zhu A, Guo W, Gupta S, Fan W, Mower JP. 2016. Evolutionary dynamics of the plastid inverted repeat: the effects of expansion, contraction, and loss on substitution rates. New Phytol 209, 1747–1756.
• Zhu A, Guo W, Jain K, Mower JP. 2014. Unprecedented heterogeneity in the synonymous substitution rate within a plant genome. Mol Biol Evol 31, 1228–1236.