Headshot portrait of Sarah Denny - Bio-X Honorary Fellow
Bio-X Graduate Student Fellow

Awarded in 2013
Home Department: Biophysics
Faculty Advisors: William Greenleaf (Genetics), Rhiju Das (Biochemistry), and Aaron Straight (Biochemistry)

Research Title: Dissecting RNA tertiary structure with millions of measurements at a time

Research Description: DNA in human cells is tightly compacted into a protein-DNA complex called chromatin. Condensation of chromatin is crucial to gene regulation, but the three-dimensional architecture of DNA within chromatin remains unknown. In her research, Sarah is combining high-throughput DNA sequencing with biophysical structural inference techniques to infer chromatin structure at particular genes and regulatory regions. Sarah aims to answer two fundamental questions: what are the stereotypical chromatin architectures in human cells, and how do these structures correlate with gene expression? This research will advance our understanding of the complex and nuanced layers of regulation of our genome.

WHERE IS SHE NOW?

Sarah is a director with Scribe Therapeutics. She leads the Molecular Engineering team to develop new CRISPR tools for therapeutic applications.