The Beck Lab
The Beck lab uses genomics, bioinformatics and molecular biological techniques to investigate the ways in which repetitive DNA elements, such as transposons, affect human genomes.
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Our Research Focus
The mechanisms governing non-recurrent human structural variation (SV) are diverse and often poorly understood. I am investigating how human DNA maintains fidelity in the context of a repetitive genome. Human Alu elements number over one million copies per human genome, and recent studies have found that these repeat sequences often mediate SVs in some loci. Through computational, molecular biological and genomic techniques, we will identify regions susceptible to this form of SV and investigate the enzymes that limit or promote Alu-mediated rearrangements. These lines of inquiry could find regions prone to instability in human cancers and lead to targets for therapy.
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Research HighlightJanuary 26, 2022The consequences of alternative splicing in breast cancer
JAX researchers used long-read mRNA sequencing to catalog all mRNAs in primary breast cancer samples and revealed previously undocumented mRNA isoforms that can change protein function and may contribute to cancer progression and therapy response.
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Research HighlightMarch 12, 2019A closer look at structural variants in the genome
A recent Cell paper uses long-read DNA sequencing and other advanced genomics tools and methods to shed light on genomic structural variants.