Max Mariasegaram
Positions
- Bioinformatician
Contact Details
Biography
Dr Mariasegaram completed secondary school in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, before heading to Canada to undertake a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Biochemistry at the University of Regina. His first laboratory job was in the Central Veterinary Research Laboratory in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. As a research assistant, Dr Mariasegaram's focus was on developing a microsatellite paternity test for the camel industry.
In 2000, Dr Mariasegaram returned to Australia and undertook a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Melbourne, Victoria, focusing on animal genetics. On completion of his Doctorate, he spent a short time at the Department of Primary Industries in Attwood, Victoria. At the end of 2004, Dr Mariasegaram joined the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Agricultural Research Service in Florida as a animal research associate. His research focused on mapping the genetic region responsible for the slick hair coat phenotype in Senepol cattle, a heat tolerant breed.
Dr Mariasegaram returned to Australia again in 2007 to join CSIRO Livestock Industries, based at the Queensland Bioscience Precinct in St Lucia, Brisbane. From October 2010 to January 2012, he worked for the Australian prostate Cancer Research Centre- Queensland in the role of a biostatistician.
Research interests
biostatistics/Bioinformatics - specifically as it relates to GWAS and Gene Expression Analysis, exploring the role of structural variants such as small CNVs and microsatellite as repositories of the “missing heritability” and the link between expression variation and genetics
Top publications
- Mariasegaram M, Reverter A, Barris W, Lehnert A, Dalrymple B, Prayaga K (2010) Transcriptional profiling provides insights into gene pathways involved in horn and scurs development in cattle. BMC Genomics 11, 370.
- Mariasegaram M, Robinson NA, Goddard ME (2007) Empirical evaluation of selective DNA pooling to map QTL in dairy cattle using a half-sib design by comparison to individual genotyping and interval mapping. Genetics Selection Evolution 39, 267-283.
- Mariasegaram M, Chase CC Jr, Chaparro JX, Olson TA, Brenneman RA, Niedz RP (2007) The slick hair coat locus maps to chromosome 20 in Senepol-derived cattle. Animal Genetics, 38, 54-59.
- Mariasegaram M, Robinson NA, Goddard ME (2006). Quantification of cattle DNA using quantitative competitive PCR with sheep DNA as competitor. Molecular and Cellular Probes, 20, 18-20.
