Postodoctoral Fellow
Email: loftus@clemson.edu
Biosketch
I received my bachelor’s in Digital Media with a minor in Biology from the University of Central Florida (UCF). Additionally, I earned my master’s and Ph.D. in Biomedical Sciences from UCF. My doctoral research focused on better understanding the bacterial species community structure and function in the gut microbiome of healthy human populations, and how it has been altered in late-stage colorectal cancer patients. I am joining Clemson University as a Postdoctoral fellow within Dr. Miriam Konkel’s lab.
Research
My research here at Clemson will be centered around improving the annotation and resolution of the human mobilome as well as identifying putative source elements that can lead to new genomic insertions.
Publications
Hassouneh SA, Loftus M, Yooseph S. Linking Inflammatory Bowel Disease Symptoms to Changes in the Gut Microbiome Structure and Function. Front Microbiol. 2021 Jul 19;12:673632. doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2021.673632. PMID: 34349736; PMCID: PMC8326577.
Loftus M, Hassouneh SA, Yooseph S. Bacterial community structure alterations within the colorectal cancer gut microbiome. BMC Microbiol. 2021 Mar 31;21(1):98. doi: 10.1186/s12866-021-02153-x. PMID: 33789570; PMCID: PMC8011136.
Loftus M, Hassouneh SA, Yooseph S. Bacterial associations in the healthy human gut microbiome across populations. Sci Rep. 2021 Feb 2;11(1):2828. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-82449-0. PMID: 33531651; PMCID: PMC7854710.