Associate Professor - School of Plant Sciences
baltrus@email.arizona.edu, 821C Marley
520-626-8215 / 520-626-6573 (Lab)
Educational Background
- Postdoc UNC Chapel Hill 2006-2010
- Advisor: Jeff Dangl
- PhD University of Oregon 2001-2006
- Advisors: Karen Guillemin and Patrick Phillips
- BA University of Delaware 1997-2001
Research Interests
- Microbial Evolution: How do bacterial pathogens adapt and thrive in multiple environments?
- Microbial Genomics: How and why do bacterial genomes change over time?
- Microbial Genetics: What happens if we break this gene?
Selected Publications
Baltrus, DA. 2013 "Exploring the costs of horizontal gene transfer" Trends Ecol Evol 28(8): 489-95
Baltrus DA, Nishimura MT, Dougherty KM, Biswas S, Mukhtar MS, Vicente J, Holub EB, Dangl JL. 2012 "The molecular basis of host specialization in bean pathovars of Pseudomonas syringae" Mol Plant Micro Interact 25(7): 877-88
Baltrus DA, Nishimura TM, Reinhardt JA, Romanchuk A, Chang JH, Mukhtar MS, Cherkis K, Roach J, Grant SR, Jones CD, Dangl JL “Dynamic evolution of pathogenicity revealed by sequencing and comparative genomics of 19 Pseudomonas syringae isolates” PLoS Pathogens 7(7):e1002132
Reinhardt JR, Baltrus DA (co-first author), Nishimura MT, Jeck WR, Jones CD, Dangl JL 2009 “De novo assembly using low coverage short read sequence data from the rice pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. oryzae” Genome Research 19(2):294-305
Baltrus DA, Blaser M, Guillemin K. 2009 “Helicobacter pylori Genome Plasticity” Genome Dynamics 6:75-90 Invited review for the book series
Baltrus DA, Amieva MR, Covacci A, Lowe TM, Merrell DS, Ottemann KM, Stein M, Salama NR, Guillemin K 2009 “The complete genome sequence of Helicobacter pylori strain G27” Journal of Bacteriology 191(1):447-48
Baltrus DA, Guillemin K. 2005 “Multiple phases of competence during the Helicobacter pylori growth cycle” FEMS Microbiology Letters 255:148-155
Teaching Responsibilities
- PLP 428/528 Lecture and Laboratory
Research Areas
- Genomics, Bioinformatics, and Systems Biology
- Microbiology
- Plant Protection and Pathology
