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At Cofactor, we back up everything we do with the kind of experience that lets customers get the most out of their experiments no matter sample type, size,
or timeframe.
Read about our Team Members.
Team Profiles
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At Cofactor, we back up everything we do with the kind of experience that lets customers get the most out of their experiments no matter sample type, size,
or timeframe.
Read about our Team Members.
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Introduction
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With over 20 years of combined sequencing experience, we can offer the perfect solution for your sequencing needs, beginning with design and concluding with analysis that provides answers instead of more questions.
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Dr. Jarret Glasscock, CEO
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Dr. Glasscock has spent the last 15 years bridging Molecular Genetics, Computer Science, and Sequencing technologies to provide insight to molecular systems. More than a decade was spent at Washington University’s Genome Sequencing Center. As lead of the Computational Biology Group at the Genome Center, Dr. Glasscock led a team of scientists to characterize and publish key NIH funded sequencing projects. In 2008 Dr. Glasscock left his faculty position in the department of genetics and part of the Genome Center’s Technology Development Group to found Cofactor Genomics. He has led the company to unprecedented growth and has been a key contributor to the design and analysis of the more than 800 sequencing projects Cofactor Genomics has undertaken over the last four years.
Publications:
- The value of avian genomics to the conservation of wildlife.
- DNA sequencing of a cytogenetically normal acute myeloid leukaemia genome.
- Whole-genome sequencing and variant discovery in C. elegans.
- Gallus GBrowse: a unified genomic database for the chicken.
- Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution.
- An ORFeome-based analysis of human transcription factor genes and the construction of a microarray to interrogate their expression.
- Molecular properties of adult mouse gastric and intestinal epithelial progenitors in their niches.
- Evolutionary toggling of the MAPT 17q21.31 inversion region.
- Evolutionary and biomedical insights from the rhesus macaque genome.
- UTR reconstruction and analysis using genomically aligned EST sequences.
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Jon Armstrong, COO
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Jon Armstrong was a staff scientist from 2000-2009 in the Technology Development Lab at The Genome Institute at Washington University. Mr. Armstrong was instrumental in the design of molecular tools (ex. multi-locus sequence typing), for the characterization of single-nucleotide polymorphisms in organisms such as S. aureus, uropathogenic E. coli and diseases like acute myeloid leukemia. As a staff scientist he helped develop and alpha-test next-generation sequencing applications and hardware from Illumina (Solexa), Applied Biosystems, and Roche 454. During the four years prior to joining Cofactor Genomics, Mr. Armstrong worked almost exclusively in the area of reduced representation sequencing including high-throughput PCR development and targeted sequence capture. Mr. Armstrong is recognized as an expert in the field of targeted sequence capture and most recently helped develop a technique to enrich for viral sequences from a complex sequence pool. Mr. Armstrong joined Cofactor Genomics in 2009 as Chief Operating Officer is responsible for using Cofactor’s rich resources to guide experimental design for the firm’s most challenging scientific applications.
Publications:
- Contribution of genetically restricted, methicillin-susceptible strains to the ongoing epidemic of community-acquired Staphylococcus aureus infections.
- Panton-Valentine Leukocidin-positive methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus lung infection in patients with cystic fibrosis.
- Glutamate regulates neurite outgrowth of cultured descending brain neurons from larval lamprey.
- Expression of a bcr-1 isoform of RARalpha-PML does not affect the penetrance of acute promyelocytic leukemia or the acquisition of an interstitial deletion on mouse chromosome 2.
- Identification of genes subject to positive selection in uropathogenic strains of Escherichia coli: a comparative genomics approach.
- Blinded comparison of repetitive-sequence PCR and multilocus sequence typing for genotyping methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus isolates from a children’s hospital in St. Louis, Missouri.
- A Drosophila model of multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2.
- Axonal regeneration of descending and ascending spinal projection neurons in spinal cord-transected larval lamprey.
- Generation and annotation of the DNA sequences of human chromosomes 2 and 4.
- Sequence and analysis of chromosome 5 of the plant Arabidopsis thaliana.
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Dr. Sara Ahmed, Director of Sequencing
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Dr. Ahmed joined Cofactor Genomics in April of 2011 after completing her PhD in Cell and Molecular Biology from Northwestern University. Dr. Ahmed’s PhD work focused on gaining a better understanding of the role of DNA sequence in the three dimensional organization of genes within the nucleus. She has received training on the Illumina, Solid, 454 and Ion Torrent platforms and has expertise in library construction and sequencing across the wide spectrum of sequencing applications offered at Cofactor. In addition, Dr. Ahmed constantly strives to improve our existing product offerings while devising new library techniques to push current technologies beyond the limits specified by the instrument providers.
Publications:
- A role for DNA sequence in controlling the spatial organization of the genome.
- DNA zip codes control an ancient mechanism for gene targeting to the nuclear periphery.
- Regulation and epigenetic control of transcription at the nuclear periphery.
- H2A.Z-mediated localization of genes at the nuclear periphery confers epigenetic memory of previous transcriptional state.
- Transcription Factor Binding to a DNA Zip Code Controls Interchromosomal Clustering at the Nuclear Periphery.
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Dr. David Messina, Director of Analysis
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Dr. David Messina has spent the last 16 years working in computational biology and genetics. He started his training in molecular biology and human genetics at the University of Chicago Research Cardiology unit. From there he joined the Washington University Department of Genetics and contributed to the Human Genome Project while earning a Masters degree in genetics. During this time, David and Cofactor CEO Jarret Glasscock published a paper together defining the transcription factor genes in the human genome [7]. Subsequently, David worked for three years at the Washington University Genome Institute as a computational biologist, developing software used for annotation, assembly assessment, and comparative sequence analysis. He went on to earn his Ph.D. in Erik Sonnhammer's lab in Stockholm, Sweden at the newly founded Science For Life Laboratory. Upon completing his doctoral research in metagenomics and biological data exchange systems, Dr. Messina joined Cofactor Genomics in 2012. He currently drives the computational R&D and production efforts as Cofactor's Director of Analysis.
Publications:
- Letter to the editor: SeqXML and OrthoXML: standards for sequence and orthology information.
- InParanoid 7: new algorithms and tools for eukaryotic orthology analysis.
- MetaTM - a consensus method for transmembrane protein topology prediction.
- DASher: a stand-alone protein sequence client for DAS, the Distributed Annotation System.
- Evolutionary and biomedical insights from the rhesus macaque genome.
- Gene expression in pharyngeal arch 1 during human embryonic development.
- An ORFeome-based analysis of human transcription factor genes and the construction of a microarray to interrogate their expression.
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Paul Washburn, Logistics Coordinator
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Mr. Washburn has a background in Business Economics from University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management. He has built the key operations management infrastructure that supports Cofactor’s world class science and has enabled the business to post triple digit growth numbers. To Cofactor’s clients, Mr. Washburn is the coordinator overseeing project progress and business operations.
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