Vincent Hanlon

Research Group

Plant-Parasite/Pathogen Interactions at the Crop Science Centre

Biography

I work on a hypervariable gene in plant-parasitic nematodes that is thought to have more than 1000 alleles. Strangely, these alleles seem not to be inherited but rather result from somatic rearrangements in just a few cells.

Before joining the Department of Plant Sciences, I did protocol development for single-cell DNA sequencing (Strand-seq), made an R package to detect and genotype inversions, co-developed a phasing technique that uses epigenetic imprinting to infer which parent alleles were inherited from, and estimated the rate at which heritable somatic mutations accumulate in Sitka spruce trees. I use a mix of bioinformatics, wet lab molecular biology, and (once upon a time) fieldwork.

I did my PhD with Peter Lansdorp, Diana Spierings, and Victor Guryev (University of Groningen / BC Cancer Research Centre; 2023), and I did my MSc with Sally Aitken (University of British Columbia; 2018). Before that I studied mathematics and philosophy (Queen’s University, Canada; 2014).

Key Publications

'How and when organisms edit their own genomes', (2025), Nature Genetics.

'Parent-of-origin detection and chromosome-scale haplotyping using long-read DNA methylation sequencing and Strand-seq', (2023), Cell Genomics.

'Chromosome-Length Haplotypes with StrandPhaseR and Strand-seq', (2022), Haplotyping: Methods and Protocols.

'A survey of current methods to detect and genotype inversions', (2022), Human Mutation.

'Mapping of sister chromatid exchange events and genome alterations in single cells', (2022), Methods.