Dr Tom Williams

Research summary

I'm a computational evolutionary biologist. Work in my group uses computational methods (mostly phylogenetics and bioinformatics) to study how molecules, genomes and microbes evolve, and to learn about the evolutionary history of life.

Current group members include

• Dr. Celine Petitjean (NERC PDRA): eukaryote phylogeny and genome evolution
• Dr. Paul O. Sheridan (NERC PDRA, with Cecile Gubry-Rangin, Aberdeen): genome evolution of Thaumarchaeota
• Dr. Christopher Kay (BBSRC PDRA, with Wendy Gibson, Bristol): trypanosome genomics
• Gareth Coleman (Royal Society PhD student): bacterial evolution
• Edd Moody (Royal Society PhD student): evolution of protein folds
• Brogan Harris (PhD student, with Alistair Hetherington, Bristol): gene ...

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Biography

I obtained a B.A. in Genetics (2007) and a Ph.D. in molecular evolution (2010) from Trinity College Dublin. My Ph.D. work with Mario Fares focused on the evolution of molecular chaperones in Bacteria and Archaea, and on the effect of chaperone-mediated buffering of destabilising mutations on protein evolutionary rates. From 2010-2015, I was a Marie Curie Fellow and then a Research Associate in Martin Embley's group at Newcastle University, working on phylogenomics and eukaryotic genome evolution. In 2015, I came to Bristol as a Royal Society University Research Fellow, first in Earth Sciences and now in ...

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Recent publications

• Major, P, Sendra, KM, Dean, P, Williams, TA, Watson, AK, Thwaites, DT, Embley, TM & Hirt, RP, 2019, ‘A new family of cell surface located purine transporters in Microsporidia and related fungal endoparasites’. eLife, vol 8.
• Coleman, GA, Pancost, RD & Williams, TA, 2019, ‘Investigating the Origins of Membrane Phospholipid Biosynthesis Genes Using Outgroup-Free Rooting’. Genome Biology and Evolution, vol 11., pp. 883-898

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View complete publications list in the University of Bristol publications system