A picture of Jason
Jason D. Gans
Technical Staff Member
Los Alamos National Laboratory
Bioscience Division
Phone: (505) 667-3770
Fax: (505) 665-2564
Email: jgans@lanl.gov

My research has been focused on the computational design of biochemical assays for pathogen detection. I have developed efficient, parallel computer codes to (a) design nucleic acid-based detection assays, (b) search assays against large numbers of pathogen genomes, and (c) visualize genome annotations. Applications of these codes include designing and screening detection assays for biothreat reduction, microbial ecology, disease surveillance, forensics and clinical diagnosis.

My current focus is on (a) applications of machine learning to problems in biology, and (b) biological sequence searching on a massive scale.
Selected Publications
  1. J. D. Gans, J. Dunbar, S. A. Eichorst, L. V. Gallegos-Graves, M. Wolinsky, C. R. Kuske (2012) A robust PCR primer design platform applied to the detection of Acidobacteria Group 1 in soil. Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access, 10.1093/nar/gks238
  2. J. D. Gans and M. Wolinsky (2008) Improved assay dependent searching of nucleic acid sequence databases. Nucleic Acids Research, Vol 36, No. 12, e74
  3. J. D. Gans and M. Wolinsky (2007) Genomorama: Genome visualization and analysis. BMC Bioinformatics 8:204
  4. J. Gans, M. Wolinsky, J. Dunbar. (2006) Response to comment by Volkov et al. on "Computational improvements reveal great bacterial diversity and high metal toxicity in soil". Science. 313:917; www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5789/918b
  5. J. Gans, M. Wolinsky, J. Dunbar. (2006) Response to comment by Bunge et al. on "Computational improvements reveal great bacterial diversity and high metal toxicity in soil. Science. 313:917; www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5789/918d
  6. J. Gans, M. Wolinsky and J. Dunbar. (2005) Computational improvements reveal great bacterial diversity and high metal toxicity in soil. Science. 309(5739):1387-1390.
  7. N. H. Pawley, J. D. Gans, and R. Michalczyk. (2005) APART: Automated Pre-processing for NMR With Reduced Tedium. Bioinformatics. 21(5):680-682.
  8. N. H. Pawley, J.D. Gans, and L. K. Nicholson. (2002) Factors Determining the Reliable Description of Global Tumbling Parameters in solution NMR. Journal of Biomolecular NMR. 24:215-229.
  9. J. Gans and D. Shalloway. (2001) Qmol: A program for molecular visualization on Windows based PCs. Journal of Molecular Graphics and Modeling. v.19:557-559.
  10. J.  Gans and D. Shalloway. (2000) Shadow mass and the relationship between velocity and momentum in symplectic numerical integration. Physical Review E. v.61:4587.
Available Software
ThermonucleotideBLAST
program logo
A program for searching nucleic acid-based assays against sequence databases. Current version is 2.12.
ProSig
A program for designing nucleic acid-based pathogen detection assays. Current version is 1.1.
SeqStrap
A program for "extrapolating" partial or fragmentary nucleic acid sequences prior to assay design. Current version is 1.0.
Genomorama
Program screen shot
A program for visualizing, editing and analyzing genomes. Current version is 1.54.. No longer actively developed.
QMol
Program screen shot
A program for visualizing protein structures on Windows-based computers. No longer actively developed.
PrestoPlot
Program screen shot
A program for plotting 2D data on Windows-based computers. No longer actively developed.