User:CalebKennedy

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1 Biographical information
2 Research interests
3 Contact

Biographical information

I'm currently a fourth year graduate student in Pam Silver's lab.

Before this, I worked in Paul Garrity's lab (previously at MIT, now at Brandeis University).

Education: BS Molecular Biology (2000), MS Biology (2001) Texas A&M University, College Station.

Research interests

Synthetic Biology

I'm working with Rachel to design and implement a cell-based screen utilizing an artificial transcription factor library. The (partial) library was constructed by fusing strong trans-acting regulatory domains to C₂H₂ zinc finger DNA-binding domains cloned from the human genome. We hope to learn more about transcriptional regulation in mammalian cells with the prospect of exerting control over the expression of specific genes involved in differentiation and disease.

Transcriptional programs involved in sex determination and differentiation

Transcriptional regulation represents a major mechanism responsible for the initiation of mammalian sex differentiation and subsequent events that lead to the establishment and maintenance of sexual phenotype. I'm interested in applying ChIP-chip to analyze several transcription factors involved in this process and map their in vivo genome occupancy at high resolution.

SNPs and transcriptional regulation

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) account for approximately 90% of human genetic variation and are probably responsible for a considerable amount of the phenotypic variability observed in humans, including differential suseptibility to certain complex diseases. I'm taking a computational approach utilizing the chromosome-wide ERα occupancy dataset derived from a collaboration with the Brown lab to identify functional SNPs present in transcriptional regulatory regions that may affect target gene expression.