Omar Cornejo

PhD as of July 28, 2009 (Emory University)
e-mails: oec5@cornell.edu  or ocornejo@gmail.com

BA Biology Universidad Simón Bolívar (Caracas, Venezuela).
MS in Ecology Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciones Científicas (Caracas, Venezuela).

Research interests: Population genetics, molecular evolution, and population dynamics of diseases

I am mainly interested in understanding the relative roles of recombination, mutation and selection in shaping genetic variation in and determining the genetic structure of populations of microorganism, especially those that are etiological agents of infectious diseases.   I see this subject as having the virtues of being central to our understanding of the population genetics of microbes and at the same time having practical value for understanding and ideally controlling existing and emerging infectious diseases.  I believe that a combination of experimental studies in the laboratory, mathematical modeling, and retrospective analyses  of DNA sequence data will enable us to understand the relative importance of these  evolutionary processes in generating and maintaining genetic variation in microbial populations and shaping their genetic structure.

In August 2009, Omar became Dr. Cornejo PhD, flew the EcLF coop and landed as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Cornell University.

Publications

Krief, S, Escalante, AA, Pacheco MA, Mugisha, P, Andre, C, Halbwax, M, Fischer, A, Krief, J-M, Kasenene, J, Crandfield, M, Cornejo, OE, Chavatte, J-M, Lin, C, Letourneur, M, Gruner, AC, McCutchan, T, Renia, L, Snounou, G.  (2010).  On the diversity of malaria parasites in African Apes and the origin of Plasmodium falciparum from Bonobos.  PLoS Pathogens 6(2):   e1000765. doi:10.1371/journal.ppat.1000765

Cornejo, OE. McGee, L. and  Rozen, DE.  (2010).  Polymorphic competence peptide does not restrict recombination in Streptococcus pneumoniae. Molecular Biology and Evolution 27(3): 694-702. [PDF]

Levin, BR and Cornejo, OE. 2009.  The population and evolutionary dynamics of recombination in bacteria.  PLoS Genetics 5(8): e1000601. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen1000601.

Leung, S.W., Apponi, L.H., Cornejo, OE,  Kitchen, C.M., Valentini, S.R., Pavlath, G.K.,  Dunham, C.M., Corbett, A.H. (2009).  Splice variants of the human ZC3H14 gene generate multiple isoforms of a zinc finger polyadenosine RNA binding protein.  Gene 439: 71 - 78 [PDF].

Cornejo, OE, Rozen, DE, May RM and B.R. Levin (2009) Oscillations in continuous culture populations of Streptococcus pneumoniae: Population dynamics and the evolution of clonal suicide.  Proc. R. Soc. B, 276: 999- 1008 [PDF] [Supplemental On Line Material]

Cornejo, OE, and AA Escalante. 2006. The origin and age of Plasmodium vivax. Trends in Parasitology 22(12): 558-563.[PDF]

Escalante, AA., Cornejo, OE, Freeland, DE, Poe, AE, Durrego, E, Collins, WE, and AA Lal. 2005. A monkey’s tale: The origin of Plasmodium vivax as a human malaria parasite. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 102(6): 1980-1985. [PDF]

Escalante, AA, Cornejo, OE, Rojas, A, Udhayakumar, V, and AA Lal. 2004. Assessing the effect of natural selection in malaria parasites. Trends in Parasitology 20(8): 388-395. [PDF]

Posters

BR Levin and OE Cornejo; The population and evolutionary dynamics of homologous recombination in bacteria.  Presented at the Microbial Population Biology Gordon Conference, July 2009 [PDF]