Understanding our genes, with big help from small RNAs

John Doench

While we\’ve had the parts list of the human genome (the 3 billion As, Cs, Gs, and Ts that make up our genetic code) for over a decade, the functions of most genes remains obscure. Yet knowing what genes do is critical for understanding how their dysfunction leads to disease and thus how to develop therapeutic interventions. In this talk, Doench, a senior group leader in the Broad’s Genetic Perturbation Platform, will describe how scientists “break” genes in order to discern their function, using tools re-purposed from the ancient and ongoing evolutionary struggle between organisms and deviant nucleic acids such as viruses. He will also show how the application of these tools can provide insight into biological problems, with an example from recent work focused on malaria.