Northern Illinois University

Department of Biological Sciences

Professor Mitrick A. Johns - Faculty - Plant Sciences, Bioinformatics

Photo of Mitrick Johns

Associate Professor

Educational Background

Ph.D., 1980, University of Oregon

B.S., 1973, Yale University

Fields of Interest: Plant and animal molecular biology.

Contact: Mitrick A. Johns
rjohns@niu.edu
Office: MO. 409 A,
815-753-1459
Plant Molecular Biology Center
Dept Biological Sciences
Northern Illinois University
DeKalb, IL 60115-2861

Representative Publications

Johns, M.A. and Mao, L. 2007. Differentiation of the two rice subspecies indica and japonica: a Gene Ontology perspective. Funct. Integr. Genomics. 7:135-151.  DOI 10.1007/s10142-006-003601.

Iniguez-Luy, F.L., Sass, M.E., Jung, G., Johns, M.A., and Nienhuis, J.  2006. Development of robust SCAR markers that distinguish the six cultivated Brassica species and subspecies of the U-triangle.  Journal of the American Society for Horticultural Science 131:424-432.

Guddeti S, Zhang DC, Li AL, Leseberg CH, Kang H, Li XG, Zhai WX, Johns MA, Mao L. (2005) Molecular evolution of the rice miR395 gene family.  Cell Res. 15:631-8.

Johns, M.A., P. Skroch, J. Nienhuis, P. Hinrichsen, G. Bascur, and C. Munoz-Schick. 1997. Gene pool classification of common bean landraces from Chile based on RAPD and morphological data. Crop Science 37:605-613.

Sachay, J.E., Wallace, R.L., Johns, M.A. Phosphate stress response in hydroponically-grown maize. Plant and Soil 132:85-90; 1991.

Johns, M.A. Naturally occurring active Ac transposable element in the maize CO159 inbred line. Maydica 36:189-195; 1991.

Johns, M.A. Sequences related to the maize transposable element Ac in the genus Zea. J. Mol. Evol. 30:493-499; 1990.

Johns, M.A., Fuerstenberg, S.I., Hennelly, C.A. Non-random chromosomal distribution of Ac-like sequences in inbred maize. Genet. Res. 55:71-80; 1990.

Fuerstenberg, S.I. Johns, M.A. Distribution of Bs1 retrotransposons in Zea and related genera. Theor. Appl. Genet. 80:680-686; 1990.

Johns, M.A., Babcock, M.S., Fuerstenberg, S.M., Fuerstenberg, S.I., Freeling, M., Simpson, R.B. An unusually compact retrotransposon in maize. Plant Mol. Biol. 12:633-642; 1989.

Johns, M.A., Postlethwait, J.H. Naturally occurring quantitative variants of acid phosphatase-1 in Drosophila melanogaster. Biochem. Genet. 23:465-482; 1985.

Johns, M.A., Mottinger, J., M. Freeling, M. A low copy number, copia-like transposon in the maize genome. EMBO J. 4:1093-1102; 1985.

Fedoroff, N., Shure, M., Kelly, S., Johns, M., Furtek, D., Schiefelbein J., Nelson, O. Isolation of Spm controlling elements from maize. Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 49:339-345; 1985.

Research Interests

My research work involves computer-based analyses of DNA sequence information. I am interested in the genetic mechanisms that affect plant genomes, including tandem duplications, transposable element-mediated gene duplications, and intron loss through reverse transcription. My primary work at present involves comparing the genomic sequences of the japonica and indica subspecies of rice.