Scott O. Rogers

Research Interests:

The research in our lab includes basic research in molecular evolution. One of the major projects over the past several decades has been to characterize the organisms and nucleic acids preserved in glacial ice, primarily from Antarctica. One focus has been on accretion ice from subglacial Lake Vostok, one of the largest and deepest lakes in the world, which lies under 3.5 km of glacial ice. It has been covered by ice continuously for at least 14 million years. Nevertheless, we discovered more than 3,000 unique species of organisms in the accretion ice formed from Lake Vostok water. This represents a novel environment and ecosystem, and has been used to predict similar environments in the Solar System. We also have performed extensive studies of ribosomal RNA genes in plants, fungi, and bacteria, which has allowed many predictions about the evolution of these genes. Many of these loci contain introns. We investigated these introns, and have summarized the evolution of these introns within these loci. While group I introns are found frequently in these genes, group II and spliceosomal intron are also found occasionally. The rRNA gene loci appear to be active sites of intron evolution.

Selected Publications:

Gura, C; Rogers, S.O. 2020. Metatranscriptomic and metagenomic analysis of biological diversity in subglacial Lake Vostok (Antarctica). Biology 9 (3), 55. https://www.mdpi.com/2079-7737/9/3/55

Rogers, S.O. 2019. Integrated evolution of ribosomal RNAs, introns, and intron nurseries SO Rogers. Genetica 147 (2), 103-119. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10709-018-0050-y

Rogers, S.O. 2019. Evolution of the genetic code based on conservative changes of codons, amino acids, and aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. Journal of theoretical biology 466, 1-10 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10709-018-0050-y

Impact Publications:

Rogers, S.O.; Bendich, A.J. 1985. Extraction of DNA from milligram amounts of fresh, herbarium and mummified plant tissues. Plant molecular biology 5 (2), 69-76

Rogers, S.O.; Bendich, A.J. 1987. Ribosomal RNA genes in plants: variability in copy number and in the intergenic spacer. Plant Molecular Biology 9 (5), 509-520

Shtarkman, Y.M; Koçer, Z.A.; Edgar, R.; Veerapaneni, R.S.;D’Elia, T.; PF Morris, P.F.; Rogers, S.O. 2013. ,Subglacial Lake Vostok (Antarctica) accretion ice contains a diverse set of sequences from aquatic, marine and sediment-inhabiting bacteria and eukarya. PloS one 8 (7), e67221

Rogers, S.O.; Bendich, A.J. 1987. Heritability and Variability in Ribosomal RNA Genes of Vicia faba. Genetics 117 (2), 285-295

Rogers, S.O.; Castello, J.D. 2019. Defrosting Ancient Microbes: Emerging Genomes in a Warmer World. CRC Press. https://www.routledge.com/Defrosting-Ancient-Microbes-Emerging-Genomes-in-a-Warmer-World/Rogers-Castello/p/book/9780367222628