Dan Pollard

Lab Twitter Feed (@dan_pollard_lab)

Personal Twitter Feed (@crafts_man_ship)

Personal Website (danielpollard.com)

Assistant Professor

Office Location: BI 414

Office Hours: SP17: M 11:30am Th 1pm F 2:30pm

Phone Number: (360) 650-2152

Dan.Pollard@wwu.edu

Educational & Professional Experience

University of California, Berkeley 2001-2007 Ph.D in Biophysics with a designated emphasis in Computational & Genomic Biology. Mentored by Michael B. Eisen and committee members Montgomery Slatkin & Ian Holmes. Areas of specialization: Bioinformatics, Evolutionary Genetics, & Developmental Biology

Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine 1994-1998 B.A. in Mathematics with a minor in Biology, Magna cum laude honors

Pollard_CV_May2016.pdf

Selected Awards & Honors

National Science Foundation Award MCB-1518314 2015-2018. The Causes of Natural Variation in Protein Expression.

Research Interests

Interests

I am broadly interested in how genetic variation acts at the cellular level to generate phenotypic diversity in populations. Proteins perform the vast majority of functions in the cell, and yet little is known about how genetic variation impacts protein levels. To address this fundamental question, I am currently characterizing causes of variation in protein expression levels in wild strains of the budding yeast S. cerevisiae (same species as bakers and brewers yeast). Student driven projects use a range of experimental and computational techniques including fluorescence microscopy, genetics, local yeast collecting, and bioinformatics.

Lab Members

Ciara Asamoto, Research Assistant/Lab Manager (Projects: Protein decay rates, Allele-specific protein expression, Comparison of fluorescence microscopy and Western blot protein quantification, impact of aging on mating pheromone response)

Halley Steiner, Undergraduate Researcher (Comparison of fluorescence-based and fluorescence-free cell segmentation methods for different cell morphologies)

Shelby Duffy, Undergraduate Researcher (Pheromone response reaction norms)

Brian Miller, Undergraduate Researcher (Tetrahymena RNAi pathway precursors and targets - collaboration with the Lee Lab)

Positions

I am currently recruiting undergraduate and masters graduate students.

WWU undergraduates seeking research experience who have at least one year until graduation are encouraged to apply via email with a brief description of interests and a transcript copy. Summer pay is possible if you begin working in the lab in the Winter quarter. Past undergraduate researchers include Genny Gould (currently PhD student at MIT), Daniel Cohen (currently Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Company), Homa Rahnamoun (currently PhD student at UCSD), Austin Abendroth (currently Nurses Assistant at Peacehealth Medical), and Emma Ciechanowski (currently Research Assistant at Seattle Genetics).
NSF support is available for masters students in my lab. Applications are officially due February 1st however you are very strongly encouraged to email me prior to applying so that your application is given proper consideration. Follow these links for information about the Masters in Biology and the Application.

Collaborators

Suzanne Lee, WWU

Scott Rifkin, UCSD

Mike MacCoss, UW

Recent Publications

Pollard DA, Asamoto C, Rahnamoun H, Abendroth A, Lee SR, Rifkin SA (2016). Natural Genetic Variation Modifies Gene Expression Dynamics at the Protein Level During Pheromone Response in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. BioRxiv.org.

Pollard DA, Rockman MV (2013). Resistance to Germline RNAi in a Caenorhabditis elegans Wild Isolate Exhibits Complexity and Non-Additivity. G3, g3.113.005785.

Pollard DA (2012). “Design and Construction of Recombinant Inbred Lines” in Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) : Methods and Protocols. Rifkin SA (Ed). Springer 1:871.

Li XY, MacArthur S, Bourgon R, Nix D, Pollard DA, Iyer VN, Hechmer A, Simirenko L, Stapleton M, Luengo Hendriks CL, Chu HC, Ogawa N, Inwood W, Sementchenko V, Beaton A, Weiszmann R, Celniker SE, Knowles DW, Gingeras T, Speed TP, Eisen MB, Biggin MD (2008). Transcription factors bind thousands of active and inactive regions in the Drosophila blastoderm. PLoS Biol. 2008 Feb;6(2):e27.

Clark AG, Eisen MB, Smith DR, Bergman CM, Oliver B, Markow TA, Kaufman TC, Kellis M, Gelbart W, Iyer VN, Pollard DA, Sackton TB, Larracuente AM, Singh ND, Drosophila 12 Genomes Consortium (2007). Evolution of genes and genomes on the Drosophila phylogeny. Nature, 2007. 450(7167):203-18.

Pollard DA, Iyer VN, Moses AM, Eisen MB (2006). Widespread Discordance of Gene Trees with Species Tree in Drosophila: Evidence for Incomplete Lineage Sorting. PLoS Genetics, 2006. 2:10.

Moses AM, Pollard DA, Nix DA, Iyer VN, Li X, Biggin MD, Eisen MB (2006). Large-scale turnover of functional transcription factor binding sites in Drosophila. PLoS Comp Biol, 2006. 2:10.

The Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium (2006). Insights into social insects from the genome of the honeybee Apis mellifera. Nature, 2006. 443, 931-949.

Pollard DA, Moses AM, Iyer VN, Eisen MB (2006). Detecting the Limits of Regulatory Element Conservation and Divergence Estimation Using Pairwise and Multiple Alignments. BMC Bioinformatics, 2006. 7:376.