Background

After finishing an undergraduate degree in Biology at the University of Bristol in 2006 I completed a MSc in Bioinformatics at the University of Manchester. I stayed on at the University of Manchester to complete my PhD in the lab of Prof. Simon Lovell. I am currently a Post-Doc in the Lovell lab.


Research Interests

My main research aim is to study the evolution of functional complexity. My research is focused on gene duplicates in the yeast S. cerevisiae. I have analysed the extent of gene duplication in populations of yeast as well as characterised changes in transcription factor binding sites and physical interactions that have the potential to lead to functional evolution.
During my reasearch into the evolution of duplicate genes I have helped develop DupliPHY, a software tool (available to download download) to infer the evolutionary histories of gene families along a phylogenetic tree. While the software tool will prove to be a robust tool to study the evolution of functional modules and micro RNAs it has been used to characterise the evolution of gene families in Drosophila.
Currently my research is focused on predicting the likelihood of duplicate retention using a variety of methods from comparative genomics, flux balance analysis to comparison of expression profiles. This work will form the basis of a long term experimental study of duplication in yeast.


Publications

To see my google citations profile page click here.

2013

  • Ames, RM, MacPherson, JI, Pinney, JW, Lovell, SC, Robertson, DL.
    Modular biological function is most effectively captured by combining molecular interaction data types.
    PLoS ONE. In Press.

2012

  • Ames, RM, Money, D, Ghatge, VP, Whelan, S, Lovell, SC.
    Determining the evolutionary histories of gene families.
    Bioinformatics. 28(1): 48-55.

2011

  • Ames, RM, Lovell, SC.
    Diversification at transcription factor binding sites within a species and the implications for enviornmental adaptation.
    Mol. Biol. Evol. 28(12): 3331-3344.

2010

  • Ames, RM, Rash, BM, Hentges, KE, Robertson, DL, Delneri D, Lovell, SC.
    Gene duplication and environmental adaptation within yeast populations.
    Gen. Biol. Evol. 2: 591-601.