Co-Director Centre de recherche en biologie forestière Charles-Eugène-Marchand Building, Office #2165 Université Laval Québec, Québec Canada, G1K 7P4 Phone : (418) 656-2278 Fax : (418) 656-7493 E-mail : Click here to email John MacKay Web page : Click here to access the Web page of John MacKay

Research Interests

John MacKay is an associate professor in the department of wood and forest sciences, at Laval University. His main research focus is wood formation and the genetics of wood properties in forest trees. He develops and applies functional genomics research approaches to investigate these issues. Dr MacKay’s research program integrates several approaches to investigate the genetic and molecular basis of secondary xylem physiology and structure, including large-scale EST sequencing, custom cDNA microarray development, gene expression profiling, the functional analysis of genes that regulate wood properties, the genetic variation of wood properties and gene expression in natural populations of trees.

He has lead the Arborea project (2002-2006) and co-lead Arborea II (2006-2010) funded by Genome Canada and Genome Québec. From 2000 to 2005, he has authored 16 peer-reviewed publications, one book chapter in genetics and genomics of forest trees, given 12 invited lectures, authored 45 talks and poster presentations at international, national and regional scientific meetings.

Publications

• Pavy, N, Paule, C., Parsons, L, Crow, J., Morency, M.J., Cooke, J., Johnson, J.E., Noumen, E., Guillet-Claude, C., Butterfield, Y., Barber, S., Yang, G., Liu, J,  Stott, J., Kirkpatrick, R., Siddiqui, A., Holt, R., Marra, M., Séguin, A., Retzel, E., Bousquet, J., MacKay., J. 2005. Generation, annotation, analysis and database integration of 16,500 white spruce EST clusters. BMC Genomics, 6: 144-163

• MacKay, J., Park, Y., Becwar, M., Cordero, J., Pullman, G. 2005. Genetics of Somatic Embryogenesis in Loblolly Pine and Implications for Breeding. In press Tree Genetics and Genomes

• Pliura, A. , Yu, Q., Zhang, S. Y., MacKay, J., Périnet, P., Bousquet, J. 2005. Variation in Wood Physical Properties and Their Relation to the Growth of Poplar Hybrids. Forest Science, 51: 472-482

• Tarca , A. L., Cooke , J. E. K. and J. Mackay 2005. A robust neural networks approach for spatial and intensity dependent normalization of cDNA microarray data. Bioinformatics 21: 2674-2683

• Pavy, N., J. Laroche, J. Bousquet and J. Mackay. 2004. Large-scale statistical analysis of pine xylem ESTs lead to the discovery of regulatory genes expressed in root xylem. Plant Molecular Biology. 57 : 203-224

• Egertsdotter, U., van Zyl, L., Mackay, J., Whetten, R., Peter, G. and R. Sederoff 2004. Gene expression profiling during formation of earlywood amd latewood in loblolly pine: expression profiles of 350 genes. Plant Biol., 6:654-663

• MacKay, J., Bérubé, H., Regan, S., Séguin, A. 2003. Functional genomics in forest trees: application to the investigation of defense mechanisms and wood formation. In; Plantation Forest Biotechnology for the 21st Century, C Walter and Mike Carson Eds., 163-180

• Kim, H., Ralph, J., Lu, F., Ralph, S.A., Boudet, A.M., MacKay, J.J., Sederoff, R.R., Ito, T., Kawai, S., Ohashi, H., Higuchi, T. 2003. NMR analysis of lignins in CAD-deficient plants. Part 1. Incorporation of hydroxycinnamaldehydes and hydroxybenzaldehydes into lignins. Org. Biomol. Chem., 1:268-281

• Goujon, T., Sibout, R., Eudes, MacKay, J., Jouanin, L., 2003. Genes involved in the biosynthesis of lignin precursors in Arabidopsis thaliana Plant Physiol. Biochem. 41: 677-687

• Dimmel, D.R,  MacKay, J.J., Courchene, C., White-Hughes, A., Kadla, J., Scott, J.T.,  Holtman, K., Chang, H.M., O’Malley, D. M., and S.E.. McKeand 2002. Pulping and bleaching of partially cad-deficient pine. Journal of Wood Chemistry and Technology, 21: 1-17

• Van Zyl, L., von Arnold, S., Bozhkov. P., Chen, Y., Egertsdotter, U., MacKay, J., Sederoff, R., Shen, J., Zelena, L., Clapham, D. 2002. Heterologous array analysis in Pinaceae: Hybridization of high density arrays of Pinus taeda  cDNA with cDNA from needles and embryogenic cultures of P. taeda, P. sylvestris or Picea abies . Functional and Comparative Genomics, 3: 306-318

• MacKay, J., Dimmel, D., Boon, J. 2001. Pyrolysis MS characterization of wood from CAD-deficient pine. Journal of Wood Chemistry and Technology. 21: 19-29

• Dimmel, D. R., MacKay, J., Althen, E., Parks, C., R. R. Sederoff. 2001. Pulping and Bleaching of CAD-Deficient Wood. Journal of Wood Chemistry and Technology. 21: 1-18

• Ralph, J., Lapierre,  C., Marita, J. M., Kim, H. Lu, F., Hatfield, R. D., Ralph, S., Chapple, C., Franke, R., Hemm, M., Van Doorsselaere, J., Sederoff, R. R., O’Malley, D. M., Scott, J.T., MacKay, J. J., Yahiaoui, N., Boudet, A., Pean, M., Pilate, G., Jouanin, L., Boerjan, W. 2001. Elucidation of new structures in lignins of CAD- and COMT-deficient plants by NMR. Phytochem., 57: 993-1003

• Lapierre, C., Pollet, B., MacKay, J., Sederoff, R. 2000. Lignin Structure in a Mutant Pine Deficient in Cinnamyl Alcohol Dehydrogenase, Journal of Agricultural a Food Chemistry, 48, 2326.

• Cairney J., Xu, N., Mackay, J., Pullman, G. 2000. Transcript profiling; A tool to assess the development of conifer emrbyos. In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology, 36: 155-162.