Nicholas Provart

provart.jpg
Assistant Professor
Education: 
Ph.D., Freie Universitat Berlin, 1996
Department: 
Cell & Systems Biology
Research Areas: 
Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Systems Biology & Bioinformatics, Functional Genomics & Genetics, Plant Biology
Graduate Programs: 
Cell & Systems Biology, Genome Biology & Bioinformatics
Office phone: 
416-978-7141
Lab phone: 
416-946-8149
Fax: 
416-978-5878
Office: 
ESC 3051
Lab: 
ESC 3078

nicholas [dot] provart (at)utoronto [dot] ca

Address: 

Department of Cell & Systems Biology
University of Toronto
25 Willcocks Street
Toronto, Ontario
Canada M5S 3B2

Research: 

My interests lie in the use of bioinformatics tools (some of which my lab has developed and which are available at the Bio-Array Resource, bar.utoronto.ca) to identify novel aspects of plant biology, especially in the area of plant stress biology. For instance, cluster analysis of gene expression data from plants subjected to different abiotic and biotic stresses has provided putative functional roles for several plant transcription factors, cytochrome P450s, and other members within multigene families. Furthermore, gene expression analyses can also provide inferential mechanistic insights into the development of various organs or tissues, e.g. rice seed, at the metabolic or signal transduction level. Being a founding member of the Centre for the Analysis of Genome Evolution and Function, CAGEF - with its numerous high-throughput technology platforms, my lab is well positioned to utilize and generate large amounts of sequence and gene expression data, following a systems biology approach.

2009
Wilkins, O., Nahal, H., Foong, J., Provart, N.J., Campbell, M.M. (2009).  Expansion and Diversification of the Populus R2R3-MYB Family of Transcription Factors. Plant Physiology. 149(2), 981-993. Abstract
Brady, S.M., Provart, N.J. (2009).  Web-Queryable Large-Scale Data Sets for Hypothesis Generation in Plant Biology. The Plant Cell. Abstract
Park, S.-Y., Fung, P., Nishimura, N., Jensen, D., Fujii, H., Zhao, Y., Lumba, S., Santiago, J., Rodrigues, A., Chow, T., Alfred, S., Bonetta, D., Finkelstein, R., Provart, N., Desveaux, D., Rodriguez, P., McCourt, P., Zhu, J.-K., Schroeder, J.I., Volkman, B., Cutler, S. (2009).  Abscisic Acid Inhibits Type 2C Protein Phosphatases via the PYR/PYL Family of START Proteins. Science. 324, 1068-1071. Abstract
CARVIEL, J.L., AL-DAOUD, F., NEUMANN, M., MOHAMMAD, A., PROVART, N.J., MOEDER, W., YOSHIOKA, K., CAMERON, R.K. (2009).  Forward and reverse genetics to identify genes involved in the age-related resistance response in Arabidopsis thaliana. MOLECULAR PLANT PATHOLOGY. 10(5), 621-634. Abstract
Morris, P.F., Schlosser, L.R., Onasch, K.D., Wittenschlaeger, T., Austin, R., Provart, N. (2009).  Multiple Horizontal Gene Transfer Events and Domain Fusions Have Created Novel Regulatory and Metabolic Networks in the Oomycete Genome. PLoS ONE. 4(7), e6133. Abstract
Ba, A.N.N., Pogoutse, A., Provart, N., Moses, A. (2009).  NLStradamus: a simple Hidden Markov Model for nuclear localization signal prediction. BMC Bioinformatics. 10, 202. Abstract
USADEL, B., OBAYASHI, T., MUTWIL, M., GIORGI, F.M., BASSEL, G.W., TANIMOTO, M., CHOW, A., STEINHAUSER, D., PERSSON, S., PROVART, N.J. (2009).  Co-expression tools for plant biology: opportunities for hypothesis generation and caveats. Plant, Cell & Environment. Abstract
Wilkins, O., Waldron, L., Nahal, H., Provart, N.J., Campbell, M.M. (2009).  Genotype and time of day shape the Populus drought response. The Plant Journal. 60, 703-715. Abstract
2008
Ehlting, J., Sauveplane, V., Olry, A., Ginglinger, J., Provart, N., Werck-Reichhart, D. (2008).  An extensive (co-)expression analysis tool for the cytochrome P450 superfamily in Arabidopsis thaliana. BMC Plant Biology 2008. 8, 47.
Bassel, G., Fung, P., Chow, T., Foong, J., Provart, N., Cutler, S. (2008).  Elucidating the germination transcriptional program using small molecules. Plant Physiology. 147, 143-155.
2007
Lan, H., Carson, R., Provart, N., Bonner, A. (2007).  Combining classifiers to predict gene function in Arabidopsis thaliana using large-scale gene expression measurements. BMC Bioinformatics 2007. 8, 358.
Winter, D., Vinegar, B., Nahal, H., Ammar, R., Wilson, G.V., Provart, N.J. (2007).  An 'Electronic Fluorescent Pictograph' Browser for Exploring and Analyzing Large-Scale Biological Data Sets. PLoS One. 2(8), e718. Abstract
Geisler-Lee, J., O'Toole, N., Ammar, R., Provart, N.J., Millar, A.H., Geisler, M. (2007).  A Predicted Interactome for Arabidopsis thaliana. Plant Physiology . 145, 317-329. Abstract
Brady, S., Provart, N.J. (2007).  Extreme breeding: Leveraging genomics for crop improvement. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. 87(6), 925-929. Abstract
Austin, R.S., Provart, N.J., Cutler, S.R. (2007).  C-terminal motif prediction in eukaryotic proteomes using comparative genomics and statistical over-representation across protein families. BMC Genomics. 8, 191. Abstract
2006
Ehlting, J., Provart, N.J., Werck-Reichhart, D. (2006).  Functional annotation of the Arabidopsis P450 superfamily based on large-scale co-expression analysis. Biochem. Soc. Trans. 34(6), 1192-1198. Abstract
Taylor, J., Provart, N. (2006).  CapsID: a web-based tool for developing parsimonious sets of CAPS molecular markers for genotyping. BMC Genetics. 7, 27. Abstract
2005
Toufighi, K., Brady, S., Austin, R., Ly, E., Provart, N. (2005).  The Botany Array Resource: e-Northerns, Expression Angling,and promoter analyses. The Plant Journal. 43, 153-163. Abstract
2004
Provart, N. (2004).  Developments in Plant and Animal Genome Research. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture (JSFA). 84, 473-474. Abstract
Nakhamchik, A., Zhao, Z., Provart, N., Shiu, S., Keatley, S., Cameron, R., Goring, D. (2004).  A Comprehensive Expression Analysis of the Arabidopsis Proline-rich Extensin-like Receptor Kinase Gene Family using Bioinformatic and Experimental Approaches. Plant Cell Physiol. 45(12), 1875-1881. Abstract
Austin, R., Provart, N., Sacadura, N., Nugent, K., Babu, M., Saville, B. (2004).  A comparative genomic analysis of ESTs from Ustilago maydis. Funct Integr Genomics. 4(4), 207-218. Abstract
Provart, N., McCourt, P. (2004).  Systems approaches to understanding cell signaling and gene regulation. Curr Opin Plant Biol. 7(5), 605-9. Abstract
Ilic, K., Berleth, T., Provart, N. (2004).  BlastDigester - a web-based program for efficient CAPS marker design. TRENDS in Genetics. 20 (7), 280-283. Abstract
2003
Zhu, T., Budworth, P., Chen, W., Provart, N., Chang, H.-S., Guimil, S., Zou, G., Wang, X. (2003).  Transcriptional Control of Nutrient Partitioning During Rice Grain Filling. Plant Biotech. J. 1, 59-70. Abstract
Provart, N., Zhu, T. (2003).  A Browser-based Functional Classification SuperViewer for Arabidopsis Genomics. Currents in Computational Molecular Biology. 271-272. Abstract
Provart, N., Gil, P., Han, B., Chen, W., Chang, H.-S., Wang, X., Zhu, T. (2003).  Gene Expression Phenotypes of Arabidopsis Associated with Sensitivity to Low Temperatures. Plant Physiol. 132, 893-906. Abstract
Zhu, T., Provart, N. (2003).  Transcriptional responses to low temperature and their regulation in Arabidopsis. Can. J. Bot. 81, 1168-1174. Abstract
2002
Chen, W., Provart, N., Glazebrook, J., Katagiri, F., Chang, H.-S., Eulgem, T., Mauch, F. (2002).  Expression Profile Matrix of Arabidopsis Transcription Factor Genes Suggests Their Putative Functions in Response to Environmental Stresses. The Plant Cell. 14, 559-574. Abstract
1993
Provart, N., Majeau, N., Coleman, J.R. (1993).  Characterization of chloroplastic carbonic anhydrase. Expression in E. coli and site-directed mutagenesis. Plant Molec. Biol. 22, 937-943.