Dr. Tobias Jores

Research Focus

Our research focuses on understanding gene regulatory logic in plants. Using high-throughput assays, we characterize the condition- and species-specific activity of hundreds of thousands of plant cis-regulatory elements. Using this data, we are developing deep learning models that predict the activity of novel sequences and enable the design of synthetic cis-regulatory elements. In parallel, we are developing a toolkit for transgene-free genome editing of cis-regulatory elements.

Most important publications

  1. Jores T, Tonnies J, Mueth NA, Romanowski A, Fields S, Cuperus JT, Queitsch C (2024) Plant enhancers exhibit both cooperative and additive interactions among their functional elements. Plant Cell. doi: 10.1093/plcell/koae088.
  2. Jores T, Hamm M, Cuperus JT, Queitsch C (2023) Frontiers and techniques in plant gene regulation. Curr Opin Plant Biol 75. doi: 10.1016/j.pbi.2023.102403.
  3. Gorjifard S, Jores T, Tonnies J, Mueth NA, Bubb K, Wrightsman T, Buckler ES, Fields S, Cuperus JT, Queitsch C (2023) Arabidopsis and Maize Terminator Strength is Determined by GC Content, Polyadenylation Motifs and Cleavage Probability. bioRxiv. doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.16.545379.
  4. Jores T, Tonnies J, Wrightsman T, Buckler ES, Cuperus JT, Fields S, Queitsch C (2021) Synthetic promoter designs enabled by a comprehensive analysis of plant core promoters. Nature Plants 7(6):842-+. doi: 10.1038/s41477-021-00932-y.
  5. Jores T, Tonnies J, Dorrity MW, Cuperus JT, Fields S, Queitsch C (2020) Identification of Plant Enhancers and Their Constituent Elements by STARR-seq in Tobacco Leaves. Plant Cell 32(7):2120-2131. doi: 10.1105/tpc.20.00155.