Dr. Dorcus Kholofelo Malomane

Research interests
My main interest is in the combination of computational methods and different types of omics data to disentangle and understand sources of variations in populations. Current areas of interest: Population genomics, Evolutionary genomics, Transcriptomics and gene expression, Association studies, Computational genomics methods

Current project
Currently a research associate (Postdoc), working on “Identification of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in Fraxinus excelsior in response to ash dieback”. Ash dieback is currently considered as one of the most problematic and serious disease in the European forests. The disease is caused by the pathogenic fungus Hymenoscyphus fraxineus and it threatens the persistence of ash trees in the ecosystem. The symptoms of ash dieback include the dieback of crown, wilting and premature shedding of leaves, necrotic lesions on leaves and in cambium, discoloration in bark and epicormic shooting. So far, some ash trees have shown more tolerance to the disease than others. Therefore, this project aims to identify DEGs in ash dieback susceptible vs. tolerant trees (based on propagated trials) in order to develop SNP markers for screening, selecting and breeding for tolerant ash genetic material in Germany. The SNP markers are validated in natural populations with varying levels of tolerance/susceptibility to ash dieback.

Education
2019: PhD. Agricultural Sciences: Animal Breeding and Genetics, University of Goettingen, Germany
Thesis title: Retrieving patterns of genetic diversity in a global set of chicken breeds.
2015: MSc. Business (Project Management), University College Dublin, Ireland
2013: MSc. Agriculture (Animal Breeding and Genetics), University of Limpopo, South Africa
Thesis title: Application of principal component analysis to body weight and morphological characteristics of three indigenous chicken breeds found in the Limpopo province.
2010: BSc. Agriculture (Animal Production), University of Limpopo, South Africa

Publications
Malomane, D. K., S. Weigend, A. O. Schmitt, A. Weigend, C. Reimer & H. Simianer. Genetic diversity in global chicken breeds as a function of genetic distance to the wild populations. In review: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.01.29.924696v1
Malomane, D. K., H. Simianer, A. Weigend, C. Reimer, A. O. Schmitt & S. Weigend, 2019. The SYNBREED chicken diversity panel: a global resource to assess chicken diversity at high genomic resolution. BMC Genomics, 20:345.
Malomane, D. K., C. Reimer, S. Weigend, A. Weigend, A. R. Sharifi, & H. Simianer, 2018. Efficiency of different strategies to mitigate ascertainment bias when using SNP panels in diversity studies. BMC Genomics, 19:22.
Malomane, D. K., D. Norris, C.B. Banga, J. W. N’gambi, 2014. The Use of factor scores for predicting body weight from linear body measurements in three South African indigenous chicken breeds. Tropical Animal Health and Production journal, 46:331–335