Dr. Matthew Hudson uses supercomputing and DNA sequencing to solve problems in plant, animal, and human genetics. His current research focuses on how crops are bred and on ways to treat and prevent plant, animal, and human diseases. He is particularly interested in the genetics of crop traits and the genetic and molecular interactions of soybeans with pathogens, pests, and other organisms.
More information: Hudson's research interests center on the use of high-performance computational techniques to pursue questions in genomic biology. His research program focuses on the genomic variants that control trait variation in plants, nonhuman animals and human populations, funded by grants from the NSF, DOE, and USDA as well as private companies, foundations, and commodity boards. He teaches award-winning classes at Illinois on the interface between biology and computing.
Affiliations: Hudson is a professor in the Department of Crop Sciences, part of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) at U. of I. He is also co-director of the Center for Digital Agriculture, science integration chair for the Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation (CABBI), and faculty affiliate at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.
After five trailblazing years, the Center for Digital Agriculture (CDA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has a new executive director, John Reid, who plans to support CDA’s growth across all dimensions of use-inspired research, translation of research into practice, and education and workforce development.
13-Dec-2023 10:05:27 AM EST
As a source of protein and biodiesel for cleaner renewable energy, soybean is an important crop worldwide. But is it performing to its full potential?
03-Oct-2023 02:05:44 PM EDT
“We’ve always thought that the most significant aspects of an organism’s behavior are driven, at least in part, by its own genetic endowment and not the genomics of its society,” said Matthew Hudson, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor of bioinformatics in the department of crop sciences who led the research with Gene Robinson, an entomology professor and the director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology at the U. of I. “This is a signal that there may be more to the genetics of behavior as a whole than we’ve been thinking about.”
“I thought it was super cool that we could identify genes we wouldn’t have found otherwise just by comparing genomic intervals in unrelated plant species,” says co-author Professor Matt Hudson, from the department of crop sciences at the University of Illinois, US. “We were pretty confident they were the right genes when they popped right out of this analysis, but Spalding’s group then spent seven or eight more years getting solid biological data to verify they do, indeed, play a role in gravitropism. Having done that, I think we’ve validated the whole approach such that in future, you could use this method for many different phenotypes.”