Awarded in 2010
Home Department: Microbiology & Immunology
Faculty Advisors: Helen M. Blau (Microbiology & Immunology) and Marius Wernig (Pathology)

Research Title: Mechanisms that control the onset of nuclear reprogramming using heterokaryons and high-throughput sequencing

Research Description: Jennifer’s research focused on understanding how cells can change their fate. How does a cell change its identity, and what factors are important for making this decision? All the cells in our body have an identical genome; what makes cell types differ from one another is the combination of genes they express. This is controlled by transcription factors and epigenetic modifications, which determine whether a gene is on or off. Jennifer used a cell fusion based system to identify factors controlling specific gene expression. This enables us to change one cell type into another for the purpose of regenerative medicine.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Jennifer is Director of Biology at Variant Bio, overseeing the progression of multiple therapeutic programs based on human genetics and an ethics-minded approach to human genetic research.