Daniel McKay

About

Daniel McKay is an Associate Professor of Biology and Genetics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the Director of Graduate Studies within the Genetics and Molecular Biology Curriculum. His office is located in the 3358 Genome Sciences Building. Further details about his research focus, background, and key contributions are not provided on the page.

Research topics

• Biology
• Data Mining
• Cell biology
• Computer Science
• Genetics
• World Wide Web
• Data science
• Database
• Cancer research
• Programming language

Selected publications

• Memes: A motif analysis environment in R using tools from the MEME Suite

  PLoS Computational Biology · 2021 · 107 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding

  Identification of biopolymer motifs represents a key step in the analysis of biological sequences. The MEME Suite is a widely used toolkit for comprehensive analysis of biopolymer motifs; however, these tools are poorly integrated within popular analysis frameworks like the R/Bioconductor project, creating barriers to their use. Here we present memes, an R package that provides a seamless R interface to a selection of popular MEME Suite tools. memes provides a novel "data aware" interface to the…

  DOI

• Damage-responsive, maturity-silenced enhancers regulate multiple genes that direct regeneration in Drosophila

  eLife · 2020 · 91 citations

  ).

  PublisherDOI

• Heterochromatic 3D genome organization is directed by HP1a- and H3K9-dependent and independent mechanisms

  Molecular Cell · 2024-05-24 · 22 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Reduced histone gene copy number disrupts <i>Drosophila</i> Polycomb function

  Genetics · 2023-06-06 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  The chromatin of animal cells contains two types of histones: canonical histones that are expressed during S phase of the cell cycle to package the newly replicated genome, and variant histones with specialized functions that are expressed throughout the cell cycle and in non-proliferating cells. Determining whether and how canonical and variant histones cooperate to regulate genome function is integral to understanding how chromatin-based processes affect normal and pathological development. He…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Redesigning the <i>Drosophila</i> histone gene cluster: an improved genetic platform for spatiotemporal manipulation of histone function

  Genetics · 2024-07-22 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Mutating replication-dependent (RD) histone genes is an important tool for understanding chromatin-based epigenetic regulation. Deploying this tool in metazoans is particularly challenging because RD histones in these organisms are typically encoded by many genes, often located at multiple loci. Such gene arrangements make the ability to generate homogenous histone mutant genotypes by site-specific gene editing quite difficult. Drosophila melanogaster provides a solution to this problem because…

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• Genetic and epigenetic mechanisms of developmental gene regulation

  NIH · $3.5M · 2018–2028

• NIH Grant F32GM090759

  NIH · $73k · 2011

Frequent coauthors

• Robert J. Duronio

  51 shared

• A. Gregory Matera

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  43 shared

• Giordano Caponigro

  41 shared

• Darrin D. Stuart

  Scorpion Therapeutics (United States)

  41 shared

• Emma Labrot

  33 shared

• Felipa Mapa

  Novartis (United States)

  33 shared

• Ribo Guo

  33 shared

• Paul Fordjour

  33 shared

Labs

• Genetics and Molecular Biology CurriculumPI

Education

• B.S.

  Cornell University

• Ph.D.

  Columbia University