Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics

Training & Education

Dr. Julie Dragon received her Ph.D. in Plant Biology from the University of Vermont, studying the evolution of an arctic-subarctic section of marsh sedges with Dr. David Barrington. For postdoctoral research, she studied the evolution of salt tolerance through hybridization with Dr. Marcia Waterway at McGill University, before joining the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics in 2010 as a bioinformatician with the Bioinformatics Shared Resource.  Dr. Dragon focused her efforts on the analysis of genome-wide expression data and systems biology. Since that time her research has expanded to include variant analysis and metagenomics.

Research Interests

I am a bioinformatician interested in finding high performance computing solutions to the analysis of every-increasing genomics data.  I am particularly interested in the integration of data sets of different resolutions, expression analysis, systems biology, basket studies, and machine learning to identify expression or variant patterns that can lead to improved diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of disease. My work focuses on multi-variate and uni-variate approaches to data analysis, for a wide range of basic science and translational research projects, including those related to cancer, Immunobiology, autoimmune disease, and DNA repair.  In 2014 I became Director of the Bioinformatics Shared Resource (BSR), the Larner College of Medicine’s bioinformatics core facility.  In 2016, I became Director of the Vermont Integrative Genomics Resource (VIGR), which fused the BSR with the Advanced Genome Technologies Core (AGTC) to provide wrap around genomics services to investigators.  As director of VIGR, my role is to expand and continually update the capacity of the core to create and support cutting-edge genomics-based research for the investigator community at UVM and regionally.  Myself and my team assist investigators from the experimental design through to publication of their –omics data.

Featured Publications

Munson, P, YW Lam, J Dragon, M MacPherson, and A Shukla. 2018. Exosomes from asbestos exposed cells modulate gene expression in mesothelial cells. FASEB J. Mar 19:fj201701291RR. doi: 10.1096/fj.201701291RR. PMID: 29553831.

Dragon J, Thompson J, MacPherson M, Shukla A. Differential Susceptibility of Human Pleural and Peritoneal Mesothelial Cells to Asbestos Exposure. J Cell Biochem. 2015 Aug;116(8):1540-52. PMCID: PMC4698803.

Case LK, Wall EH, Dragon JA, Saligrama N, Krementsov DN, Moussawi M, Zachary JF, Huber SA, Blankenhorn EP, Teuscher C. The Y chromosome as a regulatory element shaping immune cell transcriptomes and susceptibility to autoimmune disease. Genome Res. 2013 Sep;23(9):1474-85. PMCID: PMC3759723.

Vermont Integrative Genomics Resource - VIGR