Todd Lowe, PhD

Lab Head

Todd Lowe, University of California, Santa Cruz

Pronouns: he/him

Dr. Lowe's research uses a mixture of computational and experimental methods to identify and characterize the function and regulation of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) in many species including human, mouse, yeast, and archaea (microbes that live in extreme environments).

On the experimental side, he studies ncRNAs with high-throughput RNA sequencing techniques in human and model organisms, augmented by molecular characterization via CRISPR, RNAi and other genetic manipulation tools. He has also developed a method for sequencing transfer RNA-derived small RNAs which can detect RNA modifications in addition to expression analysis. Integration of theoretical and experimental approaches is the quickest, most efficient path to new biology.

On the computational side, his group has designed and developed algorithms, such as the widely adopted tRNAscan-SE, to identify tRNA genes in genomic sequences using probabilistic models and comparative genomics. In addition, they have developed a robust, specialized tRNA-seq data analysis pipeline for studying small non-coding RNA gene expression (tRAX) and a purely genomic method for improving tRNA characterization by inferring gene activity state (tRAP). In the dry lab, database development is a major task for continuation of data curation from our discoveries and providing latest resources to the research communities.