Olga Zhaxybayeva

|Associate Professor
Academic Appointments

  • Associate Professor of Biological Sciences

  • Adjunct Associate Professor of Computer Science

  • Simons Foundation Investigator in Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems

My research interests are to understand how microbes change over time. Recent advances in DNA sequencing technologies brought us an avalanche of data: thousands of genomes and terabases of environmental DNA (metagenomes). I mine these data sets to assess the impact of horizontal gene transfer on microbial populations, find new ways to characterize microbial communities, and track down genomic signatures of microbial adaptations.

Personal Website

Contact

Olga.Zhaxybayeva@dartmouth.edu
Life Sciences Center, Room 333
HB 6044

Department(s)

Biological Sciences

Education

  • B.S. in Applied Mathematics, Kazakh State University, Almaty, Kazakhstan (1997)
  • Ph.D. in Genetics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA (2004)
  • Postdoctoral Training in Microbial Evolution, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada (2005-2009)
  • Certificate in Computer Graphics, Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, NS, Canada (2006-2007)

Selected Publications

  • O. Zhaxybayeva and C.L. Nesbø (2025): "Impact of Horizontal Gene Transfer on Adaptations to
    Extreme Environments", Journal of Molecular Biology (in press), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmb.2025.169403

  • Farrell AA, Nesbø CL, Zhaxybayeva O. (2025): "Bacterial Growth Temperature as a Horizontally Acquired Polygenic Trait". Genome Biol Evol. 17: evae277.

  • Kogay R, Zhaxybayeva O. (2024) Co-evolution of gene transfer agents and their alphaproteobacterial hosts. J Bacteriol., 206: e0039823.

  • Farrell AA, Nesbø CL and Zhaxybayeva O. (2023) "Early Divergence and Gene Exchange Highways in the Evolutionary History of Mesoaciditogales." Genome Biol Evol., 15: evad156.

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