Genetics, Development and Disease Faculty
Program Director
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms of cell fate specification during blood vessel development and organogenesis
Faculty
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular genetics of cell death, genomic “dark matter”, p53 tumor suppressor function, 3D genome organization
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Hematopoietic stem cell and leukemia metabolism, metabolites and the stem cell genome
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Epigenetics, neurological disorders, genome engineering, single-cell genomics
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Chromatin biology, developmental gene regulation, histone variants, stem cells
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms of cell growth proliferation control
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular control of inflammatory responses in the intestine, inflammation and cancer progression, regulation of NF-kB activity, COMM.D. proteins
Professor
Research Interests: Stem cell biology, niche signaling, chromatin, translational repression
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms regulating kidney tubule formation and maintenance
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Genetics of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), molecular mechanisms underlying ASD, the ubiquitin proteasome pathway in neurodevelopmental disorders
Professor
Research Interests: Cell-cell fusion, actin cytosleletal dynamics, mechanobiology, muscle development and regeneration
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Spatial and functional genomics and epigenomics, single-cell genomics and epigenomics, computational genomics, high resolution imaging, mammalian spermatogenesis, human fertility and reproduction
Professor
Research Interests: NF-B signaling and the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Somatosensation, touch and pain pathways, social touch, circuit development, cancer-neuron crosstalk, mouse genetics, in vitro and in vivo physiology, calcium imaging, optogenetics
Professor
Research Interests: Schistosomes are parasitic flatworms that cause significant disease and disability in more than 200 million of the world’s poorest people. Using a variety of functional genomic approaches, we seek to understand fundamental aspects of schistosome biology, including the biology of somatic and reproductive stem cells.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Cell migration, membrane mechanics, actin cytoskeleton, mechanobiology
Ralph J. DeBerardinis, M.D., Ph.D.
Professor
Research Interests: Regulation of metabolism during cell growth and tumorigenesis, integrating signal transduction with metabolic flux, understanding pediatric metabolic diseases
Associate Professor
Research Interests: The development of the lymphatic vasculature and human diseases caused by errors in the development of the lymphatic vasculature.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Molecular genetics of aging and stress response in blunt trauma, degenerative disease and cancer
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Innate immunity, mucosal immunology, immunometabolism, post-translational regulation, long noncoding RNA's, inflammatory diseases, infectious diseases
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Functional genetic screens, lipid metabolism, oxidative stress
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Epigenetics, chromatin biology, gene regulation, social behavior, aging, neurodegeneration
Professor
Research Interests: AAV, gene therapy, neurodevelopmental disease, neurodegenerative disease, genetic disease, translational research
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Epigenomics, chromatin, SCNT, embryonic genome activation, preimplantation development, embryonic stem cells, pluripotency, transposons, endogenous retroviruses, ovarian follicle development, oogenesis, single-cell techniques
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Mitochondria, viruses, evolution, genome biology, miRNAs, genetic conflicts
Professor
Research Interests: Identification of genetic factors contributing to inter-individual differences in the concentration of lipoproteins in the blood
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Developing (epi)genomic/bioinformatic tools to assess and predict the functions of regulatory elements, epigenetic biomarkers of disease state, epigenetics in development and disease, global regulation of mammalian gene expression, non-coding genome function
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Chromosome, genomics, epigenetics, pediatrics
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Organelle biology, metabolism, lysosome, biochemistry, cancer, neurodegeneration
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Cancer biology, CRISPR genome editing, mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), nutrient sensing, signal transduction
Professor
Research Interests: Signal-transduction pathways in development and human disease, genetic control of organ growth and patterning, tumor suppressor genes
Professor
Research Interests: Development of the mammalian nervous system, transcriptional regulation of neural cell-type specification
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Amino acids, glutamine, proline, osteoblast, osteoclast, bone, WNT, metabolism
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular genetics endosomal trafficking in Drosophila
Professor
Research Interests: Cellular signaling, gene regulation, and epigenetic control in the chromatin environment of the nucleus; biological systems include: reproduction, cancer, inflammation, adipogenesis, stem cells, differentiation
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Connectivity and development of neuronal circuits generating somatosensation, molecular and functional diversity of spinal cord interneurons
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Cardiovascular development and disease, vascular cells, extracellular matrix, genetics
Professor
Research Interests: Cell fate, wound healing, muscle fibrosis, heterotopic ossification, injury response
Professor
Research Interests: Learning and memory, neurodevelopmental disorders, neuronal activity-dependent gene transcription, experience-dependent synaptic modification, neural circuits, GABAergic inhibitory circuits, E/I balance, memory discrimination and generalization
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Seasonal and circadian clocks, seasonal metabolism and tissue plasticity, Primate biology and disease modeling
Professor
Research Interests: Synonymous codons as new genetic codes to regulate protein structure and gene expression, mechanism of circadian clocks, small and long coding RNAs
Professor
Research Interests: Elucidate transcriptional regulatory mechanisms of genes involved in cardiovascular diseases and characterize the signaling pathways coupling these transcriptional programs to extracellular signals that trigger this disease
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Mechanisms of genomic instability and chromosomal alterations in cancer
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Mechanobiology, ion channels, immune cells, human genetics, disease, cell communication
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Tumor metastasis, tumor heterogeneity, therapy resistance, circulation tumor cells, and cellular plasticity
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Epigenetic mechanisms underlying cancer progression; ETS gene fusions in prostate cancer, genomic rearrangements in cancer, transcriptional regulation in prostate cancer
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Regulation of cell-cell adhesion during tubule and glomerular formation and in polycystic kidney disease
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Nitrogen metabolism, crosstalk between the metabolome and epigenome, metabolic mechanisms of tumor initiation, synthetic lethality, glioma biology, CRISPR/Cas9-based mouse models of cancer
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Protein degradation and homeostasis, high-throughput approaches and functional genomics screening, cancer biology, neurodegeneration
Professor
Research Interests: Regulation and function of mammalian miRNAs and other noncoding RNAs in normal physiology and disease
Professor
Research Interests: Understanding the molecular basis of glycogen malformation in the fatal Lafora epilepsy and devising gene and small-molecule based therapies for this and other childhood neurogenetic disorders.
Professor
Research Interests: Molecular basis of pathogenesis of antiphospholipid syndrome, role of Pentraxin C Reactive protein in metabolic syndrome, biology of lipoproteins and their receptors
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Disease mechanism, glycogen metabolism, ubiquitin biology, linear ubiquitin chain assembly complex, glycophagy
Professor
Research Interests: Genetic disorders of the cornea and eye, age-related degenerative trinucleotide repeat disease of the cornea
Professor
Research Interests: Cancer stem cell biology, melanoma cell proliferation and metastasis, stem cell aging, stem cell self-renewal
Saikat Mukhopadhyay, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Role of the primary cilia in normal development and cancer; functional proteomics in ciliary diseases; ciliary signaling pathways
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Transcriptional mechanisms that orchestrate formation and function of the cardiac conduction system
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Mechanisms of tumorigenesis, regulation and function of cell surface receptors in lung cancer pathogenesis
Benjamin Ohlstein, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Stem cells, intestine, developmental biology, gastrointestinal physiology, gastrointestinal cancer
Professor
Research Interests: Transcriptional control of cell differentiation, muscle development
Professor
Research Interests: Size-control mechanisms in development, regeneration, and cancer
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Gene regulation, nuclear organization by biomolecular condensates, phase separation, gene activation in development and cancer
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Membrane remodeling, organelle quality control, and pathological protein assemblies in neurodegenerative disease.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Biomolecular condensates, phase separation, protein aggregation, RNA homeostasis, stress granules, nuclear speckles, molecular networks, disordered proteins, neuromuscular disease, ALS
Professor
Research Interests: Endothelial cell biology, vascular development and disease; signaling molecules in endothelial cell caveolae/lipid rafts
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Cellular metabolism, mitochondria, reproduction, cellular quiescence
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Metabolism, cell fate, development, placenta, pregnancy
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Benign and malignant urologic diseases, computational and translational biology, cellular anatomy, single cell technology
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Neuron-glia interaction, oligodendrocyte, myelination, neurological disorders
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Atrial Fibrillation, Gene Regulation, Epigenetics, arrhythmia, transcription, cell identity, enhancer
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Kinases in the secretory pathway and the extracellular space, secreted protein and peptide hormone phosphorylation, CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Atrial fibrillation, heart failure, metainflammation
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Bone, omics, spatial transcritpomics, osteoimmunology, digit regeneration, fracture repair, heterotopic ossification, musculoskeletal biology
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: CNS injury and diseases, axon regeneration, neural circuit connectivity, vision restoration, neuron-glia interaction
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Mitochondrial dysfunction, neurodegeneration and cell death in neurological diseases and human cancers, PARP-1 signaling, DNA damage/genome instability
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Proteolytic mechanisms in cell fate, signaling and gene expression. Roles of caspases, E3 ubiquitin ligases and MAPK signaling in development and stress responses.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Inherited retinal degenerations, stem cell biology, gene editing, gene therapy, mouse models of ocular disease, metabolism and metabolic reprogramming, photoreceptor cells, genetic mechanisms of disease
Associate Professor
Research Interests: G-protein signaling during mouse development, energy homeostasis, and feeding behavior
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Neuroendocrinology, hypothalamic function, obesity, diabetes, metabolic disease, exercise, systems physiology, neural plasticity
Professor
Research Interests: Genetics of pediatric musculoskeletal and autoinflammatory diseases
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Chromatin regulation of neural development; neural stem cell differentiation; activity dependent gene expression
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Stem cells and pluripotency, genome and epigenome editing, interspecies chimera and organogenesis, species preservation
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Extrachromosomal DNA in cancer, cancer genomics, cancer epigenetics
Professor
Research Interests: Statistical genetics, genetic epidemiology, bioinformatics, gene mapping for complex traits
Professor
Research Interests: Nuclear receptor signaling and adult neural stem cells
Professor
Research Interests: Regulation and function of oxygen sensing pathway in diseases including cancer, post-translational modifications of proteins, tumor suppressor signaling and synthetic lethality
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Molecular mechanisms of major metabolic diseases including obesity, diabetes, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD)
Professor
Research Interests: Genetic and cellular mechanisms of organ regeneration and dysregulation of these mechanisms in liver cancer
Professor
Research Interests: Gut-brain axis hormones and neuronal circuits underlying obesity, diabetes, hypoglycemia, cancer cachexia, ALS, and learning/memory
Associate Members
These faculty members do not accept graduate students. They participate in teaching, co-mentoring, exam and dissertation committees, and all other program responsibilities.
Danielle Callaway, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: lung development, lineage tracing, biophysical force, epithelial cells, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, pulmonary hypoplasia
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Endoplasmic, reticulum stress and the unfolded protein response
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Pathology, comparative histopathology, neuropathology, developmental biology, ophthalmic pathology
Associate Professor
Research Interests: My research focuses on exploring the mechanisms of chromatin-dependent regulation of gene expression that lead to the development of cardiovascular diseases, metabolic disorders, and cancers.
Professor
Research Interests: Role of progenitor cells in skeletal muscle function during homeostasis and aging
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Kidney, metabolism, epigenetics, computational analysis
Vanessa Nomellini, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Innate immunity, inflammation, immune checkpoints, chronic critical illness, and personalized immune therapies
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Structure and mechanism of signaling pathways involved in development and cancer
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Molecular control of germ-cell development and meiosis
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Atrial fibrillation, transcription, epigenetics, gene regulation
Yuanyuan (Faith) Zhang, M.D., Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Radiobiology, immuno-metabolism, lung cancer
Professor
Research Interests: Genetic disorders of human growth and reproduction; Turner syndrome; infertility; obesity