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Jeff Yoder

Executive Director, Genetics and Genomics Academy; Professor, Department of Biological Sciences; Associate Member, Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences

Department of Molecular Biomedical Sciences

Thomas Hall 4558B

Bio

Dr. Yoder graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Worcester, MA) with a B.S. in Biotechnology in 1990. He received the Sigma Xi Outstanding Senior Research Award for his undergraduate thesis entitled “Cross-linking ram sperm antigen ESA152 induces the acrosome reaction”.

Dr. Yoder’s doctoral research was focused on mammalian DNA methylation and DNA (cytosine-5)-methyltransferase (DNMT) enzymes. He completed his graduate work with Dr. Tim Bestor and, in 1998, received his Ph.D. in Cell and Developmental Biology from Harvard Medical School’s graduate program in Biological and Biomedical Sciences (Boston, MA).

Dr. Yoder’s post-doctoral training was with Dr. Gary Litman in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of South Florida (St. Petersburg, FL). It was as a postdoctoral fellow that Dr. Yoder began his career as a comparative immunologist. He was the first to clone and characterize a family of putative natural killer cell receptors from zebrafish (novel immune-type receptors, NITRs).

From 2002 until 2004, Dr. Yoder was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of South Florida (Tampa, FL).

In 2004 Dr. Yoder joined the faculty at NC State University (Raleigh, NC). He continues his research on comparative immunology using zebrafish as a primary animal model for immunity and infection. Detailed descriptions of his research can be found at his lab’s web site (http://www4.ncsu.edu/~jayoder/).

Area(s) of Expertise

GENETICS, IMMUNOLOGY, INFECTIOUS DISEASES
Dr. Yoder is a leader in comparative immunology with a special focus on leveraging the zebrafish for specific questions of innate immune function in combination with human cell culture systems. The overall focus of his laboratory is on identifying novel mediators of innate immunity. Dr. Yoder's lab uses the zebrafish as a model for identifying novel mediators of immunity and for examining the immunotoxicological effects of environmental chemicals. Observations made with the zebrafish model are validated using cell culture and primary human leukocytes. He have special interests in comparative immunology, comparative genomics, immunotoxicology, genome engineering and transgenic approaches.

Publications

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