The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Jef Boeke, Ph.D., professor, department of biochemistry and molecular pharmacology, director, institute for systems genetics, New York University

Speaker bio(s)

Rapid advances in DNA synthesis techniques have made it possible to engineer viruses, biochemical pathways and assemble bacterial genomes. They have also enabled the construction of novel genetic pathways and genomic elements, furthering our understanding of systems-level phenomena. Our current understanding of genomics is solidly within the experimental phase, yet genome engineering is in its infancy. The synthetic yeast genome project, Sc2.0, is well on its way with several of the first synthetic Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosomes completed. Undergraduate students provide a workforce for synthesis and assembly for some of these chromosomes, though a wide variety of assembly schemes are employed by the various groups building chromosomes. The synthetic genome features several systemic modifications, including TAG/TAA stop-codon replacements, deletion of subtelomeric regions, introns, tRNA genes, transposons and silent mating loci as well as strategically placed loxPsym sites to enable genome scrambling using an inducible evolution system termed SCRaMbLE (Synthetic Chromosome Rearrangement and Modification by LoxP-mediated Evolution). SCRaMbLE can be used as a novel method of mutagenesis, capable of generating complex genotypes and a variety of phenotypes. The fully synthetic yeast genome will open the door to a new type of combinatorial genetics based on variations in gene content and copy number, rather than base changes. Dr. Boeke will also describe supernumerary designer “neochromosomes” that add new functionalities to cells such as humanized pathways.

Dr. Boeke is the founding director of the Institute for Systems Genetics at NYU Langone Medical Center. He is known for work on mechanistic and genomic aspects of retrotransposition, and develops technologies in genetics, genomics and synthetic biology. He studied biochemistry at Bowdoin College, then spent a year as a Watson Fellow, collecting plants in the Andes. He obtained a Ph.D. in molecular biology from The Rockefeller University in 1982, where he worked on the genetics of filamentous phage assembly with Peter Model and Norton Zinder. He did his postdoctoral work at MIT/Whitehead Institute on yeast/transposon genetics with Gerald Fink. He served on the faculty of the department of molecular biology and genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine from 1986 to 2014, where he also founded the High Throughput Biology Center. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and sciences and the National Academy of Science.

Open to

Public

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Linda Hanssler

Phone

(212) 327-7714

Sponsor

Linda Hanssler
(212) 327-7714
lhanssler@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=3780