Brandon Pickett, PhD
Postdoctoral Fellow (alum)
pickettbd
nih.gov
Brandon got an undergraduate degree in Bioinformatics wiith a double minor in Computer Science and Business Management from Brigham Young University in 2015. He then did a post-bac internship with the Forage and Range Research Laboratory, part of the USDA's Agricultural Research Service, where he developed an interest in genomics and genome assembly. After returning to BYU for his graduate studies, Brandon began working on genome assemblies for several non-model marine fishes. He defended his dissertation (supervised by Drs. Perry Ridge and Keoni Kauwe) in 2021 and subsequently joined the Genome Informatics Section at the NHGRI.
Origin and evolution of acrocentric chromosomes in human and great apes
bioRxiv, December 23, 2025
Solar SJ, Hebbar P, Gomes de Lima L, Sweeten A, Rhie A, Potapova T, de Gennaro L, Guarracino A, Kim J, Pickett BD, Paten B, Wilson MA, Koren S, Garrison E, Eichler EE, Ventura M, Gerton JL, Phillippy AM
Complete de novo assembly and re-annotation of the zebrafish genome
bioRxiv, November 17, 2025
Okendo J, Koren S, Rhie A, Torrado-Tapias A, Pickett BD, Brooks SY, Bouffard GG, Crawford JK, Sison C, Joardar VS, Murphy TD, Tierney JAS, Haggerty L, Martin FJ, Wilson C, Amores A, Postlethwait JH, Murphy J, Sakai N, Varga ZM, Phillippy AM, Burgess SM
The formation and propagation of human Robertsonian chromosomes
Nature, September 24, 2025
de Lima LG, Guarracino A, Koren S, Potapova T, McKinney S, Rhie A, Solar SJ, Seidel C, Fagen BL, Walenz BP, Bouffard GG, Brooks SY, Peterson M, Hall K, Crawford J, Young AC, Pickett BD, Garrison E, Phillippy AM, Gerton JL
A complete diploid human genome benchmark for personalized genomics
bioRxiv, September 21, 2025