Gill Bejerano
Academic Appointments
- Assistant Professor, Developmental Biology
- Assistant Professor, Computer Science
- Member, Bio-X
- Member, Stanford Cancer Institute
Key Documents
Contact Information
- Academic Offices
Personal Information Tel (650) 723-7666Alternate Contact Kathy Fisher Admininstrative Associate Email Tel Work 650-725-6792
Professional Overview
Administrative Appointments
- Technical Advisory Board, Numenta (2008 - present)
- Member, Editorial Board, Gene (2007 - 2008)
Honors and Awards
- New Faculty Fellow, Microsoft Research (2009)
- Fellow, David & Lucile Packard Foundation (2008-2013)
- Research Grant Award, Okawa Foundation (2008)
- Searle Scholar, Searle Scholars Program (2008-2011)
- Young Investigator Award, Human Frontier Science Program (2008-2011)
- Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (2008-2010)
Professional Education
| Ph.D.: | Hebrew University, Computer Science (2004) |
| B.Sc.: | Hebrew University, Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science (summa cum laude) (1997) |
Graduate & Fellowship Program Affiliations
Internet Links
Scientific Focus
Current Research Interests
Only 2-3% of the 3 billion bases in the human genome is used to encode the genome's 20-25,000 protein coding genes. Recent genomics advances have revealed a multitude of cis-regulatory regions that occupy at least 3-5 times more of the genome. These roughly 1,000,000 promoters, enhancers, silencers and insulators regulate gene expression in every cell in our body, allowing different cells to express very different protein repertoires. We study this fascinating "control layer" of the human genome, with an aim to:
1. Identify cis-regulatory elements in the human genome and annotate them for function.
2. Map the cis-regulatory architecture controlling early limb, forebrain and placenta development, and understand its contribution to human disease.
3. Study the origins and evolution of regulatory genomic regions and reveal their contribution to vertebrate, mammalian and human specific evolution.
To address these challenges we use a potent combination of computational and experimental approaches. We write computational tools to discover cis-regulatory codes and trace their evolution; we run our tools on massive genomic datasets to generate testable hypotheses; and we perform molecular biology experiments to validate our hypotheses and generate novel ones. We work in small teams of experimentalists and computational tool users, who interact directly with our computational tool builders. Please see http://bejerano.stanford.edu/ for more details.
Publications
- Enhancers: five essential questions. Nat Rev Genet. 2013; (4): 288-95
- Evolutionary biology for the 21st century. PLoS Biol. 2013; (1): e1001466
- PRISM offers a comprehensive genomic approach to transcription factor function prediction. Genome Res. 2013; (5): 889-904
- A "forward genomics" approach links genotype to phenotype using independent phenotypic losses among related species. Cell Rep. 2012; (4): 817-23
- A novel 13 base pair insertion in the sonic hedgehog ZRS limb enhancer (ZRS/LMBR1) causes preaxial polydactyly with triphalangeal thumb. Hum Mutat. 2012; (7): 1063-6
- Coding exons function as tissue-specific enhancers of nearby genes. Genome Res. 2012; (6): 1059-68
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