Research Interests
Our bodies are covered in a diverse and abundant array of miroorganisms that are collectively known as our microbiome. Studies on the human microbiome have indicated that these organisms can influence our health, highlighting the importance of understanding the following questions: 1) who is there? 2) where are they? 3) what are they doing? My research is broadly directed towards understanding these questions. I specialize in the development and application of high-throughput computational and statistical tools that characterize the diversity of the human microbiome as it relates to health. My interests center on understanding how microorganisms and their biological functions are distributed across space, time, and host phenotype with the aim of developing testable hypotheses about how human-associated communities interact with our bodies. The tools I develop are open source and publicly available.

Bio/CV

After obtaining a B.S. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from Oregon State University, I joined John Taylor's lab at UC Berkeley for my Ph.D. research where I employed comparative genomic methods to investigate fungal genome evolution. I am now a postdoctoral researcher in Katherine Pollard's lab at UCSF and am co-advised by Jonathan Eisen at UC Davis My full CV.

Publications

Wylie KM, Truty RM, Sharpton TJ, Mihindukulasuriya KA, Zhou Y, Sodergren E, Weinstock GM, Pollard KS. (2012) " Novel Bacteria Taxa in Stool Samples from Healthy Human Subjects " PLoS ONE. 7(6). HMP Consortium (2012) " A Framework for Human Microbiome Research " Nature. 486. HMP Consortium (2012) " Structure, Function and Diversity of the Human Microbiome in an Adult Reference Population " Nature. 486. Sharpton TJ, Riesenfeld SJ, Kembel SW, O'Dwyer J, Green JL, Eisen JA, Pollard KS. (2011) " PhylOTU: A high-throughput procedure quantifies microbial community diversity and resolves novel taxa from metagenomic data. " PLoS Computational Biology. 7(1). Neafsey DE, Barker BM, Sharpton TJ, Stajich JE, Park D, et al. (2010) " Population genomic sequencing of Coccidioides fungi reveals recent hybridation and signals of immune-mediated natural selection. " Genome Research 20. Sharpton TJ, Stajich JE, Rounsley SW, Gardner MJ, Wortman JR, et al. (2009) " Comparative genomic anlayses of the human fungal pathogens Coccidioides and their relatives. " Genome Research 19. Sharpton TJ, Neafsey DE, Galagan JE, and Taylor JW. (2008) " Mechanisms of Intron Gain and Loss in Cryptococcus. " Genome Biology 9 (1). Sharpton TJ and Jhaveri AJ. (2006) " Leveraging the Knowledge of our Peers: Online communities hold the promise to enhance scientific research. " PLOS Biology 4(6).