Andrew J. Roger is a Canadian-Australian

molecular biologist Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

and evolutionary bioinformatician. He is currently a professor in th
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
at

Dalhousie University Dalhousie University (commonly known as Dal) is a large public research university in Nova Scotia, Canada, with three campuses in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Halifax, a fourth in Bible Hill, Nova Scotia, Bible Hill, and a second medical school campus ...

and was the founding director (from 2008-2017) of the inter-departmental Centre for Comparative Genomics and Evolutionary Bioinformatics (CGEB).

Education and career

Roger received his B.Sc from the

University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia (UBC) is a Public university, public research university with campuses near University of British Columbia Vancouver, Vancouver and University of British Columbia Okanagan, Kelowna, in British Columbia, Canada ...

and his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

from Dalhousie University. Roger was elected as a fellow of the

Royal Society of Canada The Royal Society of Canada (RSC; , SRC), also known as the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada (French: ''Académies des arts, des lettres et des sciences du Canada''), is the senior national, bilingual council of distinguishe ...

in 2012http://www.rsc-src.ca/en/search-fellows?keywords_44=&first_name=Andrew&last_name=Roger&display_name=Dalhousie+University&election_year_21=&academy_25=All&division_24=All&discipline_23=All&is_deceased=0&sort_by=last_name&sort_order=ASC for his work on eukaryotic superkingdoms, his work on the evolution of mitochondrion-related organelles in anaerobic protists and his contribution to investigating and improving phylogenetic models

Research

A former student of Ford Doolittle, Roger's research focuses on the 'deep'

Tree of Life The tree of life is a fundamental archetype in many of the world's mythology, mythological, religion, religious, and philosophy, philosophical traditions. It is closely related to the concept of the sacred tree.Giovino, Mariana (2007). ''The ...

, especially determining the super-kingdom-level relationships amongst eukaryotes and clarifying the nature of th
last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA)
Using phylogenomic approaches Roger's group elucidates the patterns and process of genome evolution in eukaryotic microbes. His research also addresses the evolutionary origin of

mitochondria A mitochondrion () is an organelle found in the cells of most eukaryotes, such as animals, plants and fungi. Mitochondria have a double membrane structure and use aerobic respiration to generate adenosine triphosphate (ATP), which is us ...

hydrogenosome A hydrogenosome is a membrane-enclosed organelle found in some Anaerobic organism, anaerobic Ciliate, ciliates, Flagellate, flagellates, Fungus, fungi, and three species of Loricifera, loriciferans. Hydrogenosomes are highly variable organelles t ...

s, and

mitosome A mitosome (also called a ''crypton'' in early literature) is a mitochondrion-related organelle (MRO) found in a variety of parasitic unicellular eukaryotes, such as members of the supergroup Excavata. The mitosome was first discovered in 1999 in ...

s, the role of lateral (horizontal) gene transfer in eukaryotic genome evolution and how anaerobic parasites evolved from free-living ancestors.

Selected publications

*Roger, A.J. and Susko, E. (2018) Molecular clocks provide little information to date methanogenic archaea. ''Nature Ecol. Evol.'' 2: 1676-1677. *Muñoz-Gómez, S.A., Hess, S., Burger, G., Lang, B.F., Susko, E., Slamovits, C.H. and Roger, A.J. (2019) An updated phylogeny of the Alphaproteobacteria reveals that the parasitic Rickettsiales and *Holosporales have independent origins. ''eLife'', Feb. 25; 8. pii: e42535. *Hess, S., Eme, L., Roger, A.J. and Simpson, A.G.B. (2019) A natural toroidal microswimmer propelled by a rotary eukaryotic flagellum. ''Nature Microbiol.'' 4:1620-1626. *Susko E. and Roger, A.J. (2019) On the use of information criteria for model selection in phylogenetics. ''Mol. Biol.'' Evol., Nov. 5 *Susko E, Roger AJ., (2013) Problems with estimation of ancestral frequencies under stationary models. ''Syst Biol.'' 62(2):330-8 *Stairs, C.W., Roger, A.J. and Hampl, V. , (2011) Eukaryotic pyruvate formate lyase and its activating enzyme were acquired laterally from a firmicute. ''Mol. Biol. Evol.'' 28:2087-2099

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roger, Andrew J. 21st-century Australian biologists Canadian molecular biologists Academic staff of Dalhousie University Year of birth missing (living people) Living people University of British Columbia alumni