Dr Matt Oates - Post-doctoral Researcher

School of Biological Sciences
Life Sciences Building
24 Tyndall Avenue
Bristol, United Kingdom.
BS8 1TQ
Phone: +44 (0)796 3096805
Email: Matt.Oates@bristol.ac.uk



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Background

For more information than that listed below please see my CV.

Research interests

  • The evolution of the protein repertoire, especially looking at signalling proteins in Eukarya.
  • The role of posttranslational modification in disordered protein interaction and network evolution.
  • Comparative genomics, from a structural protein domain perspective.
  • Biological sequence analysis, from nucleotide upto amino acids.
  • 3D protein structure, including both well structured globular domains and intrinsically disordered regions.
  • The geographic distribution of protein structure and diversity in relation to species diversity and distribution globally.
  • I'm also the maintainer of the D2P2 database.

Publications

» Go to my full Google Scholar page

2014

  • Sardar,A.J., Oates,M.E., Fang,H., Forrest,A.R.R., Kawaji,H., "The FANTOM Consortium", Gough,J., & Rackham, O.J.L. (2014).
    "The Evolution of Human Cells in Terms of Protein Innovation." Molecular Biology and Evolution. DOI:10.1093/molbev/mst139

2013

  • Oates,M.E., Romero,P., Ishida,T., Ghalwash,M., Mizianty,M.J., Xue,B., Dosztányi,S., Uversky,V.N., Obradovic,Z., Kurgan,L., Dunker,A.K., Gough,J. (2013).
    "D2P2: Database of Disordered Protein Predictions." Nucleic Acids Res. DOI:10.1093/nar/gks1226
  • Fang,H., Oates,M.E., Pethica,R.B., Greenwood,J.M., Sardar,A.J., Rackham,O.J.L., Donoghue,P.,C.J., Stamatakis,A., de Lima Morais,D.A., Gough,J. (2013).
    "A daily-updated tree of (sequenced) life as a reference for genome research." Scientific Reports, 3. DOI:10.1038/srep02015

Information

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher working with Prof. Julian Gough on various projects relating to the SUPERFAMILY resource, and the ongoing development and integration of protein disorder data into the groups research infrastructure.
Between 2009-2013 I undertook a joint MRes and PhD with the Bristol Centre for Complexity Sciences. One masters project involved looking at the evolution of Berridge's "Calcium Cell Signalling Toolkit" over all sequenced life, this was with Prof. Julian Gough and Prof. Alistair Hetherington who I later worked with to complete my PhD. This was followed by a placement in the Bristol Robotics Laboratory investigating embedding an evolutionary process in a sawrm of foraging robots. Ultimately I continued looking at the evolution of cell signalling in plants for my PhD, with a focus on using contemporary ideas on protein disorder including both its structure and function to understand what has happened to IP3 related signalling in Embryophytes. This lead to the development of the D2P2 database starting in 2011 and published in early 2013 to help me perform comparitive studies of disordered protein content.
Previously (2008) I have worked as a research assistant in the Centre for Catchment & Coastal Research part of the Institute for Geography and Earth Sciences at Aberystwyth. The most notable academic work throughout the year was the integration of a high-definition laser scanner with a rugged robotic chassis, designed to repeatedly scan large scale riverbeds. This year of work extended my undergraduate degree at Aberystwyth University doing a BSc in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence (2003-2007). My degree concluded in a dissertation focused on implementing a symbiogenetic operator in a Genetic Algorithm to help preserve coupling between loci, and to try and speed up adoption of highly fit partial solutions in a non discriminatory way. During the middle of my undergrad degree I took time out for a year in "industry". I accepted a student programmer placement (2006) in the Remote Sensing Group at Plymouth Marine Laboratories, where I was responsible for the development of a batch data ordering/processing system for Antarctic satellite data. This work was funded as part of the Rothera ARIES Data Archive project.


Organisations and funding

  • Member of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB)
  • EPSRC PhD Studentship funded via the Bristol Centre for Compelxity Sciences (BCCS) doctoral training centre.
  • My research is supported indirectly from grants in the group awarded by the BBSRC, EPSRC,the EU Seventh Research Framework Programme [FP7], Amazon (AWS) and Google Research.