Dr Richard Taylor

Post-doctoral research

I am a full-time BBSRC core-funded scientist in the Macqueen group. My current interests lie in applying a range of bioinformatic and comparative approaches to key questions in genomic evolution, in addition to single cell transcriptomic analysis.

In particular, the unique evolutionary history of the Salmonidae, combined with the recent availability of extensive genomic and transcriptomic resources in this group, presents an exciting opportunity to better understand the impact of whole genome duplication events on organismal evolution.

Biography and previous work

I have an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and a PhD in Complexity Science, both from the University of Bristol. For my PhD, I studied the evolution of microRNAs across the plant kingdom, during which time I developed a range of skills in evolutionary biology, phylogenetics, and bioinformatics. I then spent two years as a bioinformatician at the University of Edinburgh, analyzing single cell transcriptomic data generated from experiments aimed at bettering our understanding the genetics of regeneration in liver and heart.

Publications

See all publications here: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=IDogKWEAAAAJ&hl=en

Greenhalgh SN, Matchett KP, Taylor RS, Huang K, Li JT, Saeteurn K, et al. Loss of Integrin αvβ8 in Murine Hepatocytes Accelerates Liver Regeneration. Am J Pathol. 2019;189(2):258–71.

McCracken IR, Taylor RS, Kok FO, de la Cuesta F, Dobie R, Henderson BEP, et al. Transcriptional dynamics of pluripotent stem cell-derived endothelial cell differentiation revealed by single-cell RNA sequencing. Eur Heart J. 2019;

McCracken IR, Taylor RS, Henderson NC, Sluimer JC, Baker AH. Unravelling atherosclerotic heterogeneity by single cell RNA sequencing. Curr Opin Lipidol. 2018;29(6):488–9.

Ruiz Daniels R, Taylor RS, Serra-Varela MJ, Vendramin GG, González-Martínez SC, Grivet D. Inferring selection in instances of long-range colonization: The Aleppo pine (Pinus halepensis) in the Mediterranean Basin. Mol Ecol. 2018;27(16):3331–45.

Tarver JE, Taylor RS, Cormier A, Carré W, Strittmatter M, Coelho SM, et al. microRNAs and the evolution of complex multicellularity: Identification of a large, diverse complement of microRNAs in the brown alga Ectocarpus. Nucleic Acids Res. 2015;43(13):6384–98.

Tarver JE, Taylor RS, Puttick MN, Lloyd GT, Pett W, Fromm B, et al. Well-annotated microRNAomes do not evidence pervasive miRNA loss. Genome Biol Evol. 2018;10(6):1457–70.

Taylor RS, Tarver JE, Foroozani A, Donoghue PCJ. MicroRNA annotation of plant genomes − Do it right or not at all. BioEssays. 2017;39(2):1600113.

Taylor RS, Tarver JE, Hiscock SJ, Donoghue PCJ. Evolutionary history of plant microRNAs. Trends Plant Sci. 2014;19(3):175–82.