Michael Gore

The Gore lab combines quantitative genetics, genomics, analytical chemistry and remote sensing to elucidate the genetic basis of complex trait variation in various crops, including maize, oat, cassava, cotton, sorghum, industrial rapeseed, and guayule.

Selected Journal Publications

View profile and publications on Google Scholar.

• Wu, D., Li, X., Tanaka, R., Wood, J.C., Tibbs-Cortes, L.E., Magallanes-Lundback, M., Bornowski, N., Hamilton, J.P., Vaillancourt, B., Diepenbrock, C.H., Li, X., Deason, N.T., Schoenbaum, G.R., Yu, J., Buell, C.R., DellaPenna, D., and Gore, M.A. 2022. Combining GWAS and TWAS to identify candidate causal genes for tocochromanol levels in maize grain. Genetics iyac091.
• Albert, E., Kim, S., Magallanes-Lundback, M., Bao, Y., Deason, N., Danilo, B., Wu, D., Li, X., Wood, J.C., Bornowski, N., Gore, M.A., Buell, C.R., and DellaPenna, D. 2022. Genome-wide association identifies a missing hydrolase for tocopherol synthesis in plants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119: e2113488119.
• Lin, M., Qiao, P., Matschi, S., Vasquez, M., Ramstein, G.P., Bourgault, R., Mohammadi, M., Scanlon, M.J., Molina, I., Smith, L.G., and Gore, M.A. 2022. Integrating GWAS and TWAS to elucidate the genetic architecture of maize leaf cuticular conductance. Plant Physiology kiac198.
• Hershberger, J., Tanaka, R., Wood, J.C., Kaczmar, N., Wu, D., Hamilton, J.P., DellaPenna, D., Buell, C.R., and Gore, M.A. 2022. Transcriptome-wide association and prediction for carotenoids and tocochromanols in fresh sweet corn kernels. The Plant Genome 15:e20197.
• Jain, P., Liu, W., Zhu, S., Yao-Yun Chang, C., Melkonian, J., Rockwell, F.E., Pauli, D., Sun, Y., Zipfel, W.R., Holbrook, N. M., Riha, S.J., Gore, M.A., and Stroock, A.D. 2021. A minimally disruptive method for measuring water potential in-planta using hydrogel nanoreporters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118: e2008276118.
• Campbell, M.T., Hu, H., Yeats, T.H., Caffe-Treml, M., Gutiérrez, L., Smith, K.P., Sorrells, M.E., Gore, M.A., and Jannink, J.-L. 2021 Translating insights from the seed metabolome into improved prediction for lipid-composition traits in oat (Avena sativa L.). Genetics 217:iyaa043.
• Lozano, R. , Gazave, E. , dos Santos, J.P.R., Stetter, M., Valluru, R., Bandillo, N., Fernandes, S.B., Brown, P.J., Shakoor, N., Mockler, T.C., Cooper, E.A., Perkins, M.T., Buckler, E.S., Ross-Ibarra, J., and Gore, M.A. 2021. Comparative evolutionary genetics of deleterious load in sorghum and maize. Nature Plants 7:17-24.
• Diepenbrock, C.H., Ilut, D.C., Magallanes-Lundback, M., Kandianis, C.B., Lipka, A.E., Bradbury, P.J., Holland, J.B., Hamilton, J.P., Wooldridge, E., Vaillancourt, B., Góngora-Castillo, E., Wallace, J.G., Cepela, J., Mateos-Hernandez, M., Owens, B.F., Tiede, T., Buckler, E.S., Rocheford, T., Buell, C.R., Gore, M.A., and DellaPenna, D. 2021. Eleven biosynthetic genes explain the majority of natural variation for carotenoid levels in maize grain. The Plant Cell 33:882-900.
• Qiao, P. Bourgault, R. Mohammadi, M., Matschi, S., Philippe, G., Smith, L.G., Gore, M.A., Molina, I., and Scanlon, M.J. 2020. Transcriptomic network analyses shed light on the regulation of cuticle development in maize leaves. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117:12464-12471.

Presentations and Activities

• Building a nutritious and resilient food system through advances in crop genomics and phenomics. IDGP Plant Biology Graduate Program Seminar Series. 2021. UMass Amherst, Amherst, MA.
• From tractors to rovers: field-based plant phenomics to bridge the genotype-phenotype gap. National Association of Plant Breeders Annual Meeting. 2021. Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
• Integration of nutritional genomics and high-throughput phenotyping in a post-genome era. Department of Bioinformatics and Genomics Seminar Series. 2019. UNC-Charlotte, Charlotte, NC.  
• Deep learning for image-based detection of Northern Leaf Blight in maize. Plant Health 2019–American Phytopathological Society Annual Meeting. 2019. Cleveland, OH.  
• Insights into the genetic basis of crop nutritional quality and stress resilience. 2019. Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea.
• Insights into the genetic control of vitamin levels in maize grain. Joint Meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Section of the American Society of Plant Biologists and the University of Maryland Plant Biology Symposium. 2019. University of Maryland, College Park, MD.
• Monitoring the resilience of cropping systems: Plant as the sensor. Seminar. 2019. Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD.  
• Insights into the genetic basis of crop nutritional quality and stress resilience. UC Davis Plant Science Symposium. 2019. UC Davis, Davis, CA.   

Outreach and Extension Focus

Michael serves on the editorial boards of Genetics, The Plant Phenome Journal, and Plant Breeding and Biotechnology, and served as the Chair for the Plant Breeding Coordinating Committee (SCC080)―the USDA-sponsored advisory group of representatives from land grant universities.

• Fellow (2023) American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Cotton Genetics Research Award (2023) Joint Cotton Breeding Committee
• Fellow (2022) Crop Science Society of America
• President’s Awards for Excellence: Culture of Belonging Award (2021) Cornell University
• Distinguished Alumnus in Crop and Soil Environmental Sciences (2017) Virginia Tech
• Early Career Excellence in Maize Genetics Award (2016) Maize Genetics Executive Committee
• Early Career Award (2013) American Society of Plant Biologists
• Early Career Scientist Award (2012) National Association of Plant Breeders

• PLBRG 4070: Nutritional Quality Improvement of Food Crops
• PLBRG 4110: High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping.

Michael also teaches two short courses at the Tucson Plant Breeding Institute in Tucson, Arizona and other international locations.