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, pain and touch pathways, mouse genetics, in vitro and in vivo physiology, 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.
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: Calcium channels and calcium signalling in the nervous system;he 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: 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: Host-pathogen interactions, genetic conflicts, positive selection, genome evolution, innate immunity, evolutionary immunology, horizontal gene transfer, poxviruses, mutation, genetic disease, genomics
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
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
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
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
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: 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: CNS injury and diseases, axon regeneration, neural circuit connectivity, vision restoration, neuron-glia interaction
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
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Mitochondrial dysfunction, neurodegeneration and cell death in neurological diseases and human cancers; PARP-1 signaling; DNA damage/genome instability
Assistant 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
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.
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Endoplasmic, reticulum stress and the unfolded protein response
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Pathology; comparative histopathology; neuropathology; developmental biology; ophthalmic pathology
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Cardiovascular development and disease, vascular cells, extracellular matrix, genetics
Professor
Research Interests: Role of progenitor cells in skeletal muscle function during homeostasis and aging
Vanessa Nomellini, M.D., Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Innate immunity, inflammation, immune checkpoints, chronic critical illness, and personalized immune therapies
Associate Professor
Research Interests: Molecular control of germ-cell development and meiosis
Assistant Professor
Research Interests: Structure and mechanism of signaling pathways involved in development and cancer
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