Alexander Tice, Ph.D.

Education & Positions

Education:

• Ph.D. in Biology, 2020, Mississippi State University
• M.S. in Biology, 2014, University of Arkansas
• B.S. in Biology, 2011, University of Arkansas

Positions:

• Assistant Professor. Texas Tech University, Department of Biological Sciences. (2023 – Present)
• Postdoctoral Researcher. Mississippi State University, Department of Biological Sciences. (2021-2023)
• Postdoctoral Researcher. Institute of Parasitology, Biology Centre CAS. České Budějovice, Czech Republic. (Spring 2021)
• Postdoctoral Researcher. Mississippi State University, Department of Biological Sciences. (Fall 2020)

Select Publications:

Life on earth is fascinatingly diverse. An often overlooked and understudied component of life's diversity lies in the eukaryotic organisms that are neither plants, animals, or fungi. These enigmatic eukaryotes are collectively referred to as “protists.” Despite the fact most eukaryotes are protists, much of our understanding of eukaryotic ecology and evolution is based on studies using animal, plant, or fungal species. Research in the Tice lab combines classical techniques such as light and electron microscopy with cutting edge approaches such as high throughput sequencing and bioinformatic analyses to better understand the biodiversity, ecology, evolution, and life-history of protists. Sampling these previously unknown or understudied protistan lineages using both culture-based, and non-culture-based approaches allows us to fill significant gaps in our understanding of diverse aspects of the ecology and evolution of life on earth.

Selected Publications

• Tice AK, Spiegel FW, Brown MW. (2023). Phylogenetic placement of the protosteloid amoeba Microglomus paxillus identifies another case of sporocarpic fruiting in Discosea (Amoebozoa). Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/jeu.12971.

• Tice AK*, Žihala D*, Pánek T*, Salomaki ES, Jones RE, Nenarokov S, Burki F, Eme L, Eliáš M, Roger AJ, Rokas A, Shen X-X, Strassert JFH, Kolísko M, Brown MW. (2021). Phylofisher: A phylogenomic package for resolving eukaryotic relationships. PLOS Biology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001365.

• Kang S*, Tice AK*, Lahr DJG, Brown MWB. (2021). The integrin-mediated adhesome complex, essential to multicellularity is present in the most recent common ancestor of animals, fungi and amoebae. Current Biology. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.076.

• Porfirio-Sousa AL, Tice AK, Brown MW, Lahr DJG. (2021). Phylogenetic reconstruction and evolution of the Rab GTPase gene family in Amoebozoa. Small GTPases. doi: 10.1080/21541248.2021.1903794.

• Onsbring H*, Tice AK*, Barton BT, Brown MW, Ettema TJG. (2020). An efficient single-cell transcriptomics workflow for microbial eukaryotes benchmarked on Giardia intestinalis cells. BMC Genomics. doi: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-06858-7.

• Kang S, Tice AK, Spiegel FW, Silberman JD, Pánek T, Čepička I, Kostka M, Kosakyan A, Alcântara DM, Roger AJ, Shadwick LL, Smirnov A, Kudryavstev A, Lahr DJG, Brown MW. (2017). Between a pod and a hard test: the deep evolution of amoebae. Molecular Biology & Evolution. doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx162.

• Tice AK, Shadwick LL, Fiore-Donno AM, Geisen S, Kang S, Schuler GA, Spiegel FW, Wilkinson K, Bonkowski M, Dumack K, Lahr DJG, Voelcker E, Clauß S, Zhang J, Brown MW. (2016). Expansion of the molecular and morphological diversity of Acanthamoebidae (Centramoebida, Amoebozoa) and identification of a novel life cycle type within the group. BMC Biology Direct 11:69. doi: 10.1186/s13062-016-0171-0.

• Tice AK, Silberman JD, Walthall AC, Le KND, Spiegel FW, Brown MW. (2016). Sorodiplophrys stercorea: another novel lineage of sorocarpic multicellularity. Journal of Eukaryotic Microbiology. Vol. 63(5):623-628. doi: 10.1111/jeu.12311.

- “*” indicates equal contribution

A comprehensive list of Dr. Tice's publications can be found at https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=4jR5i0sAAAAJ&hl=en