Thomas R. Ioerger

About

Thomas R. Ioerger is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Texas A&M University. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, obtained in 1996, and a B.S. in Molecular and Cell Biology from Pennsylvania State University. His research interests include artificial intelligence, machine learning, intelligent agents, and bioinformatics. He has been recognized as a Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station and received the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award from the Department of Computer Science at Texas A&M University. His work involves applying computational techniques to biological problems, including gene essentiality analysis, drug target identification, and resistance mechanisms in Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

Research topics

• Biology
• Microbiology
• Virology
• Biochemistry
• Genetics
• Medicine

Selected publications

• Comprehensive analysis of iron utilization by Mycobacterium tuberculosis

  PLoS Pathogens · 2020 · 99 citations

  Iron is essential for nearly all bacterial pathogens, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb), but is severely limited in the human host. To meet its iron needs, Mtb secretes siderophores, small molecules with high affinity for iron, and takes up iron-loaded mycobactins (MBT) and carboxymycobactins (cMBT), from the environment. Mtb is also capable of utilizing heme and hemoglobin which contain more than 70% of the iron in the human body. However, many components of these iron acquisition path…

  DOI

• Mutations in <i>fbiD</i> ( <i>Rv2983</i> ) as a Novel Determinant of Resistance to Pretomanid and Delamanid in Mycobacterium tuberculosis

  Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy · 2020 · 88 citations

  -deficient mutants displayed hypersusceptibility to some antibiotics and to concentrations of malachite green found in solid media used to isolate and propagate mycobacteria from clinical samples.

  DOI

• SuFEx-based antitubercular compound irreversibly inhibits Pks13

  Nature · 2025-07-30 · 15 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Transposon-sequencing across multiple <i>Mycobacterium abscessus</i> isolates reveals significant functional genomic diversity among strains

  mBio · 2024-12-31 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Mycobacterium abscessus (Mab ) is a clinically significant pathogen and a highly genetically diverse species due to its large accessory genome. The functional consequence of this diversity remains unknown mainly because, to date, functional genomic studies in Mab have been primarily performed on reference strains. Given the growing public health threat of Mab infections, understanding the functional genomic differences among Mab clinical isolates can provide more insight into how its ge…

  PublisherDOI

• Frequently arising ESX-1-associated phase variants influence <i>Mycobacterium tuberculosis</i> fitness in the presence of host and antibiotic pressures

  mBio · 2025-01-28 · 10 citations

  articleOpen access

  ABSTRACT Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) exhibits an impressive ability to adapt to rapidly changing environments, despite its genome’s apparent stability. Recently, phase variation through indel formation in homopolymeric tracts (HT) has emerged as a potentially important mechanism promoting adaptation in Mtb. This study examines the impact of common phase variants associated with the ESX-1 type VII secretion system, focusing on a highly variable HT upstream of the ESX-1 regulatory factor, esp…

  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21GM059398

  NIH · $203k · 2002

• Decoding the roles of critical genes of unknown function in M. tuberculosis

  NIH · $21.4M · 2013–2019

Frequent coauthors

• James C. Sacchettini

  Texas A&M University

  113 shared

• Chongguang Yang

  Sun Yat-sen University

  65 shared

• Chieh-Yin Wu

  Texas A&M University

  65 shared

• Patrick Cudahy

  65 shared

• Po‐Liang Lu

  Kaohsiung Municipal Ta-Tung Hospital

  65 shared

• Po-Chen Liu

  National Chung Hsing University

  65 shared

• Joshua L. Warren

  Yale University

  65 shared

• Hsiao‐Han Chang

  National Tsing Hua University

  65 shared

Awards & honors

• Faculty Fellow, Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TE…
• Graduate Teaching Excellence Award, Dept. of Computer Scienc…
• Graduate Fellowship, National Science Foundation (NSF) (1990…

Similar researchers at Texas A&M University

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