W. Thomas Shier, PhD

Expertise

Antibiotics, Mycotoxins, Cell killing mechanisms, Genome mining

Awards & Recognition

Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2001.

Research Summary

Research in the Shier laboratory is focused on the following three areas:

1. Necrosis as a potential cell killing mechanism for use by antibody-drug conjugates (ADCs);
2. Fungi that infect plants from the soil enter roots by releasing mycotoxins that target dividing
   cells in meristematic tissue. These mycotoxins are being investigated as a potential source of
   anti-cancer antibiotics;
3. Genome mining as an approach to producing relatively large amounts of potential drugs from
   coral reef organisms and other sources by transferring biosynthesis gene packages to a
   Streptomyces species that grows well in culture and produces antibiotic well under industrial
   fermentation conditions.

PubMed

• Khambhati VH, Abbas HK, Sulyok M, Tomaso-Peterson M, Chen J, Shier WT. (2023) Mellein: Production in culture by Macrophomina phaseolina isolates from soybean plants exhibiting symptoms of charcoal rot and its role in pathology. Frontiers in Plant Science, 14, 1105590. doi: 10.3389/fpls.2023.1105590.
• Paulk RT, Abbas HK, Rojas MG, Ramos JM, Busman M, Little N, Shier WT. (2024) Evaluating Acheta domesticus (Orthoptera: Gryllidae) for the reduction of fumonisin B 1 levels in livestock feed. Journal of Economic Entomology, 117, 427-434. doi.org/10.1093/jee/toae025
• Kausar N, Shier WT, Albekairi NA, Ahmed M, Maryam, Alshammari A, Saleem M, Imran M, Muddassar M. (2024) Investigation of the insecticidal potential of curcumin derivatives that target the Helicoverpa armigera sterol carrier protein-2. Heliyon 10, e29695. doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e29695
• Ilyas M, Shad AA, Bakht J, Villalta P, Shier WT. (2024) Insight into metabolites profiling and pharmacological investigation of Aconitum heterophyllum wall ex. Royle stem through experimental and bioinformatics techniques. ACS Omega, 9, 26922-26940. doi.org/10.1021/acsomega.3c09668.
• Hadi A, Yaqoob M, Hussain F, Alkahraman YMSA, Jan MS, Mahmood A, Shier T, Rashid U. (2024) Antileishmanial potential of thiourea-based derivatives; design, synthesis and biological activity. RSC Advances, 14, 37131, doi.org/10.1039/d4ra04965a.
• Ullah TS, Firdous SS, Shaheen H, Hussain J, Shier WT, Khalid AN. (2025) Metabolic and proteomic analysis of a medicinal morel (Morchella elata) from Western Himalayas, Kashmir. Metabolomics, in press.