Helen Piontkivska Assistant Professor Ph.D., 2003, Penn State University Tel: (330) 672-3620 Fax: (330) 672-3713 opiontki@kent.edu Cources taught: (Fall 2005, 2007, 2008) Bioinformatics (Spring 2006, 2007, 2008) Elements of Genetics Lab on the web

The research in my lab fall under two broad umbrellas, evolution of genomic sequences and host-pathogen interactions, including large-scale analysis of genomic sequences to studying mechanisms of adaptive evolution and origin of novel gene function and evolution of gene families and genomes.

Among current research projects are:

1) Evolutionary interactions between viruses and vertebrate immune system

2) Origin and evolution of multigene families

3) Evolution of protein structure

Selected Publications: click for more of our publications in PubMed

Hughes AL, Piontkivska H. (2005) DNA repeat arrays in chicken and human genomes and the adaptive evolution of avian genome size. BMC Evol Biol. 2005 Feb 4;5(1):12

Piontkivska H. (2004) Efficiencies of maximum likelihood methods of phylogenetic inferences when different substitution models are used. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 31 (1): 865-873

Piontkivska H., Y. Zhang, E.D. Green and L. Elnitski. (2004) Multi-species sequence comparison reveals dynamic evolution of the elastin gene that has involved purifying selection and lineage-specific insertions/deletions. BMC Genomics 5(1): 31

Piontkivska H. and M. Nei. (2003) Birth-and-death Evolution in Primate MHC Class I Genes: Divergence Time Estimates. Mol. Biol. Evol. 20 (4): 601-609

Piontkivska H. and A.L. Hughes. (2003) Evolution of Vertebrate Voltage-Gated Ion Channel Alfa Chains by Sequential Gene Duplication. J.Mol.Evol. 56 (3): 277-285

Piontkivska H., A.P. Rooney and M. Nei. (2002) Purifying Selection and Birth-and-death Evolution in the Histone H4 Gene Family. Mol. Biol. Evol. 19 (5): 689-697

Nei M., I.B. Rogozin, and H. Piontkivska (2000) Purifying Selection and Birth-and-death Evolution in the Ubiquitin Gene Family. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 97(20): 10866-10871