Ek Han Tan
Associate Professor of Plant GeneticsDegree: Ph.D. 2011 Washington University in St Louis
Pronouns: he/him/his
Research Topic: Plant genetics and genomics, genome elimination, potato breeding, chromothripsis
Research Program:
My work examines pressing questions surrounding genome instability and change. To answer these questions, we take advantage a phenomenon known as genome elimination that occurs during sexual reproduction in plants. What results from a genome elimination cross is the production of haploid offspring that carry half the expected number of chromosomes, derived solely from one parent. This manner of haploid induction is of great interest to plant breeders because it can help accelerate the development of new varieties. In potato breeding, we hope to enable genome elimination-based techniques to improve the speed at which traits such as improved yield and disease resistance can be transferred from the lab into the field. In addition, we also discovered that a type of extreme chromosome rearrangement known as chromothripsis can sometimes occur during genome elimination. This provides a unique opportunity to study the mechanistic basis and evolutionary consequences of chromothripsis in a whole organism setting. Please visit our lab website for more details.
Publications:
Tan, E.H., Comai, L., Henry, I.M. (2016) Chromosome Dosage Analysis in Plants Using Whole Genome Sequencing. Bio-protocol, 6(13): e1854. [Open access link]
Tan, E.H., Henry, I.M., Bradnam, K., Mandakova, T., Marimuthu, M., Ravi, M., Korf, I., Lysak, M., Comai, L., Chan, S.W.L. (2015) Catastrophic chromosomal restructuring during genome elimination in plants.eLife, doi: 10.7554/eLife.06516. [Open access link]
Kuppu, S., Tan, E.H., Nguyen, H., Comai, L., Chan, S.W.L., Britt, A.B. (2015) Point mutation in the centromeric histone induce post zygotic incompatibility and uniparental inheritance. PLOS Genetics, doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1005494. [Open access link]
Maheshwari, S., Tan, E.H., Comai, L., Chan, S.W.L. (2015). Naturally occurring differences in CENH3 affect chromosome segregation in zygotic mitosis of hybrids. PLOS Genetics, doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004970. [Open access link]
Ravi, M.*, Marimuthu, M.*, Tan, E.H.*, Maheshwari, M.*, Henry, I.M., Marin-Rodriguez, B., Urtecho, G., Tan, J., Thornhill, K., Zhu, F., Panoli, A., Sundaresan, V., Britt, A.B., Comai, L., Chan, S.W.L. (2014 – *Equal contribution) A haploid genetics toolbox for Arabidopsis thaliana. Nature Communications, 5:5334 doi: 10.1038/ncomms6334. [Open archive link]
Tan, E.H., Blevins, T., Ream, T.S. and Pikaard, C.S. (2012) Functional consequences of subunit diversity in RNA Polymerase II and V. Cell Reports, 1(3):208-214. [Open access link]
Mosher, A. R., Tan, E.H., Shin, J., Fischer, R.L., Pikaard, C.S., Baulcombe, D.C. (2011) An atypical epigenetic mechanism affects uniparental expression of Pol IV-dependent siRNAs. PLOS ONE, 6(10): e25756. [Open access link]
Song, J., Durrant, W.E., Wang, S., Yan, S., Tan, E.H., Dong, X. (2011) DNA repair proteins are directly involved in regulation of gene expression during plant Immune Response. Cell Host & Microbe, 9(2): 115-124. [Open archive link]