Kevin R. ThorntonAssistant Professor, Ecology & Evolutionary Biology |
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Research Interests |
Genome evolution, gene duplication, population genetics, adaptation | |
| URL | Research Page | |
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Academic Distinctions | Sloan Postdoctoral Fellowship (Computational Molecular Biology) | |
| Appointments | Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Cornell University | |
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Research Abstract |
My lab studies the molecular basis of adaptation in the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster. Ongoing projects include using population genetics (both empirical and theoretical) to understand the dynamics of the evolution of duplicate genes, studying the molecular evolution of sex chromosomes, and developing methods to make inference about adaptation in natural populations from molecular data. | |
| Publications | Gilad, Y., J. K. Prichard, and K. Thornton (2009) Characterizing natural variation using next-generation sequencing technologies. Trends in Genetics 25: 463-471 | |
| K. R. Thornton (2009) Automating approximate Bayesian computation by local linear regression. BMC Genetics 10:35. | ||
| Jensen, J. D., K. R. Thornton and P. Andolfatto (2008) An approximate Bayesian estimator suggests strong recurrent selective sweeps in Drosophila PLoS Genetics. 4: e1000198 | ||
| Jensen, J. D., K. R. Thornton and C. F. Aquadro (2008) Inferring selection in partially sequenced regions. Molecular Biology and Evolution 25: 438-446 | ||
| Thornton, KR (2007) The neutral coalescent process for recent gene duplications and copy-number variants. Genetics 177: 987-1000 | ||
| Jensen, J. D., K. R. Thornton, C. D. Bustamante, and C. F. Aquadro (2007). On the utility of linkage disequilibrium as a statistic for identifying targets of positive selection in non-equilibrium populations. Genetics 176: 2371-2379 | ||
| Tang, K., K.R. Thornton, and M. Stoneking (2007) A New Approach for Using Genome Scans to Detect Recent Positive Selection in the Human Genome. PLoS Biology 5:e171 | ||
| Thornton, K. R. and J. D. Jensen (2007) Controlling the false positive rate in multilocus genome scans for selection. Genetics 175: 737–750 | ||
| Thornton, K.R., J.D. Jensen, C. Becquet, and P. Andolfatto (2007) Progress and prospects in mapping recent selection in the genome. Heredity 98: 340-348. | ||
| Thornton, K., and P. Andolfatto (2006) Approximate Bayesian inference reveals evidence for a recent strong bottleneck in non-African populations of Drosophila melanogaster Genetics 172: 1607-1619 | ||
| Thornton, K., D. Bachtrog, and P. Andolfatto (2006) X-chromosomes and autosomes evolve at similar rates in Drosophila - no evidence for faster-X protein evolution. Genome Research 16: 498-504 | ||
| D. Bachtrog, K. Thornton, A. Clark, and P. Andolfatto (2006) Extensive introgression of mitochondrial DNA relative to nucelar genes in the Drosophila yakuba species group. Evolution 60: 292-302 | ||
| G.M. Wilson, S. Flibotte, P.I. Missirlis, M.A. Marra, S. Jones, K. Thornton, A.G. Clark, and R.A. Holt. (2006) Identification by full coverage array CGH of human DNA copy number increases relative to chimpanzee and gorilla. Genome Research 16: 173-181 | ||
| Thornton, K. (2005) Recombination and the properties of Ta jima’s D in the context of approximate likelihood calculation. Genetics 171: 2143-2148. | ||
| Haddrill, P., K.R. Thornton, B. Charlesworth, and P. Andolfatto (2005) Multilocus patterns of nucleotide variability and the demographic and selection history of Drosophila melanogaster populations. Genome Research 15: 790-799 | ||
| Thornton, K. and M. Long. (2005) Excess of amino acid substitutions relative to polymorphism between X-linked duplications in D. melanogaster. Molecular Biology and Evolution 22: 273-284 | ||
| Richards, S., Y. Liu, B. R. Bettencourt., P. Hradecky, S. Letovsky, R. Nielsen., K. Thornton, and 43 coauthors (2005) Comparative genome sequencing of Drosophila pseudoobscura : Chromosomal, gene, and cis-element evolution. Genome Research 15:1-18 | ||
| Wang, W., K. Thornton, J.J. Emerson, and M. Long (2004) Nucleotide variation and recombination along the fourth chromosome in Drosophila simulans. Genetics 166: 1783-1794 | ||
| Thornton, K. (2003) libsequence, a C++ class library for evolutionary genetic analysis. Bioinformatics 19(17): 2325-2327 | ||
| Long, M., E. Betran, K. Thornton, and W. Wang. (2003) Origin of new genes: Glimpses from the young and old. Nature Reviews Genetics 4: 865-875 | ||
| Betran, E., K. Thornton, and M. Long (2002) Retroposed new genes out of the X in Drosophila. Genome Research 12: 1854-1859. | ||
| Thornton, K. and M. Long (2002) Rapid Divergence of Gene Duplicates on the Drosophila melanogaster X chromosome. Molecular Biology and Evolution 19:918-925. | ||
| Wang, W., K. Thornton, A. Berry and M. Long (2002) Nucleotide variation along the Drosophila melanogaster fourth chromosome. Science 295: 134-137. | ||
| Long, M. and K. Thornton. (2001) Techincal Comment: Gene Duplication and Evolution. Science 293: 1551a. | ||
| Link to this profile | http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=5379 | |
| Last updated | 10/20/2009 | |