James C. Estill

Contact Information

Email: jestill@uga.edu
Phone: 706-542-9729
Homepage: http://jestill.myweb.uga.edu
Address:
Department of Genetics
C424 Life Sciences Building
Athens, GA 30602

Education

Western Kentucky University. 1996.
BS (Biology/Environmental Science)
Graduate of the WKU Honors Program
Honors Thesis: Demographic and Molecular Genetic Analysis of Spiraea virginiana

Research Interests

Generally I am interested in the application of the tools of bioinformatics and molecular biology to the study of plant evolutionary and ecophysiological genomics. My current research include:

  • Developing software and statistical methods for exploratory spatial data analysis of genomes with particular interest the effect of genomic context on the evolution of genetic subunits as well as spatially referenced comparative genomic analyses
  • The use of linker libraries to connect gene islands in the maize genome
  • RepMiner: A Network based approach to the identification of the repetitive DNA content from low coverage genomic library data
  • DAWG-PAWS: A Distributed Annotation Working Group Pipeline for the Annotation of Wheat Sequences. This is aPERL based pipeline for the semi-automated annotation of randomly selected Wheat BACs using the Apollo Genome Annotation Curation Tool.

Publications

  1. James C. Estill and Mitch Cruzan. 2001. "Phytogeography of rare plant species endemic to the Southeastern United States." Castanea. 66(1-2): 3-23.
     
  2. Andrew H. Paterson, John E. Bowers, Daniel G. Peterson, James C. Estill and Brad A. Chapman. 2003. "Structure and evolution of cereal genomes." Current Opinion in Genetics and Development. 13:644-650.
     
  3. F. Alex Feltus, Jun Wan, Stefan R. Schulze, James C. Estill, Ning Jiang and Andrew Paterson. 2004. "An SNP resource for rice genetics and breeding based on subspecies Indica and Japonica genome alignments". Genome Research. 14: 1812-1819.
     
  4. Regina S. Baucom, James C. Estill and Mitch Cruzan. 2005. "The effect of deforestation on the genetic diversity and structure in Acer saccharum (Marsh): evidence for the loss and restructuring of genetic variation in a natural system ." Conservation Genetics. 6: 39-50. 
     
  5. Bayram Yüksel., John E. Bowers, James C. Estill, Conny Lemke, and Andrew H. Paterson. 2005. "Exploratory integration of peanut genetic and physical maps and possible contributions from Arabidopsis." Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 111: 87-94.
     
  6. Junkang Rong, John E. Bowers, Stefan R. Schulze, Vijay N. Waghmare, Carl J. Rogers, Gary J. Pierce, Hua Zhang,  James C. Estill, and Andrew H. Paterson. 2005. "Comparative genomics of Gossypium and Arabidopsis: unraveling the consequences of both ancient and recent polyploidy." Genome Research. 15(9): 1198-1210.
     
  7. John E. Bowers, Miguel A. Arias, Rochelle Asher, Jennifer A. Avise, Robert T. Ball, Gene A. Brewer,  Ryan W. Buss, Amy H.Chen, Thomas M. Edwards, James C. Estill, Heather E. Exum, Valorie H. Goff, Kristen L. Herrick, Cassie L. James Steele, Santhosh Karunakaran, Gmerice K. Lafayette, Cornelia Lemke, Barry S. Marler, Shelly L. Masters, Joana M. McMillan, Lisa K. Nelson, Graham A. Newsome, Chike C. Nwakanma, Rosana N. Odeh, Cynthia A. Phelps, Elizabeth A. Rarick, Carl J. Rogers, Sean P. Ryan, Keimun A. Slaughter, Carol A. Soderlund, Haibao Tang, Rod A. Wing, Andrew H. Paterson. 2005. "Comparative physical mapping links retention of microsynteny to chromosome structure and recombination in grasses." PNAS. 102(37):13206-13211.
     
  8. Bayram Yüksel, James C. Estill, Stefan R. Schulze, and Andrew H. Paterson. 2005. "Organization and evolution of resistance gene analogs in peanut." Molecular Genetics and Genomics. 274(3): 248-263.
     
  9. Casey M. Bethel, Erica. B. Sciara, James C. Estill, John E. Bowers, Wayne Hanna, Andrew H. Paterson. 2006. "A framework linkage map of bermudagrass (Cynodon dactylon x transvaalensis) based on single-dose restriction fragments." Theoretical and Applied Genetics. 112(4): 727-737.
     
  10. Andrew H. Paterson, John E. Bowers, James C. Estill, Thomas C. Osborn, J. Chris Pires, Richard Amasino, Carlos F. Quiros, and Mark Farnham. 2006. "Evolutionary history of the Angiosperms and its relevance to Brassica." Acta Hort. (ISHS). 706:49-54.
     
  11. Andrew H. Paterson, Brad A. Chapman, Jessica C. Kissenger, John E. Bowers, Frank A. Feltus and James C. Estill. 2006. "Many gene and domain families have convergent fates following independent whole-genome duplication events in Arabidopsis, Oryza, Saccharomyces and Tetraodon." Trends in Genetics. 22(11): 597-602.

Software

  • BACMan: BAC Data Management. 2000- 2005.
  • BACGrid: Digital BAC Library Scoring Software. 2001.
  • BACEater: Automated BAC Library Scoring Processor. 2004.
  • DAWG-PAWS: Pipeline to Annotate Wheat Sequences. 2006-Present.
  • MyGCAT: My Genome Collection with Assigned Taxonomy. 2002-Present.
  • DNA DABBLER: DNA Sequence Database and BLAST Builder 2003-Present.
  • OligoMan: Oligonucleotide Data Management. 2005
  • GenCart: Genome Cartology in R. 2005-Present.
  • LabMan: Laboratory Management Database. 2000-2004.

Teaching Experience

  • Fundamentals of Botany I Lab (UTK BOT 110)
  • Fundamentals of Botany II Lab (UTK BOT 120)
  • Fundamentals of Genetics Lab (UTK BIO 240)
  • General Ecology Lab (UTK BIO 250)
  • Plant Ecology Lab (UTK BOT 431)
  • Ecological Basis of Environmental Issues Lab (UGA ECOL 1000)

Awards and Honorary Organizations

  • Valedictorian - Augusta Independent High School
  • WKU Award of Excellence Scholarship 1991-1995
  • WKU Department of Biology Scholarship 1994-1995
  • WKU Undergraduate Scholarship 1995-1996
  • Phi Eta Sigma - Freshman Honors Society
  • Beta Beta Beta - Biology Honors Organization
  • Graduate of the Western Kentucky University Honors Program
  • Magna Cum Laude Western Kentucky University
  • Young Botanist Award 1996 Presented by the Botanical Society of America
  • Best Student Oral Presentation 2004 UGA Department of Plant Biology
Last Updated: 7/5/2007