Laboratories & Leaders
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Helen Blau, PhD |
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Helen Blau, PhD Profile | Lab Site
The question of fundamental interest to our laboratory is how cells maintain a quiescent, proliferative or differentiated state. Once a cell becomes specialized for function in a particular tissue, that differentiated state is stable, yet the molecular mechanisms that control the expression of its characteristic repertoire of genes are largely dynamic. Our research is directed at understanding this apparent paradox and elucidating the nature of cell memory and cell plasticity. By perturbing the intracellular or extracellular milieu, we are probing the regulatory network that determines cell fate and how it can be altered. This knowledge is key to our understanding of stem cell quiescence, self-renewal, differentiation, and how cancer arises. This information is also critical to the use of somatic cells or stem cells for therapeutic purposes. More »
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Chang-Zheng Chen, PhD |
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Chang-Zheng Chen, PhD Profile | Lab Site
We study the genetic networks controlled by regulatory RNAs, such as microRNAs and small interfering RNAs, and the roles of these RNAs in modulating the development, function and pathogenesis of vertebrate immune systems. Animal genomes not only contain the genetic information to make messenger RNAs (mRNA), which are then translated into proteins, but they also carry the genetic information to make non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), which play important roles in regulating gene expression and animal development. Among all the ncRNA species, microRNAs (miRNAs) are small ncRNAs of ~22 nucleotides in length that form sequence-guided interactions with the cognate mRNA target genes and regulate gene expression at the posttranscriptional level. More »
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Garry Nolan, PhD |
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Garry Nolan, PhD Profile | Lab Site
Control of T cell signaling, machine learning of signaling states by Systems Biology, leukemia/cancer autoimmunity, and HIV-1 are prominent in our studies. We use advanced Flow Cytometric analysis (FACS) of phosphoproteins in single cells and dominant effector genetics to achieve many of our goals. For this we have developed a range of FACS assays, cDNA and peptide expression systems using viruses, and single-cell genetic selections, to study pathways of interest to us. More »
