Down Syndrome

Down Syndrome

Labs studying Down Syndrome

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Allen Lab

The Allen Lab is focused on deciphering meaning in an individual person鈥檚 genome and how person-to-person DNA sequence variability contributes to personal traits, ultimately enabling personalized medicine. They devote special effort to understanding how conditions associated with Down syndrome arise from the extra copy of chromosome 21.听

Chuong Lab

The Chuong Lab investigates the evolution and function of gene regulatory networks, or the choreography of gene activity in response to specific cues. They are particularly interested in virus-derived 鈥淒NA parasites鈥 that have been co-opted by human genomes over evolutionary time and are responsible for biological landmarks such as the placenta and human-specific immune system traits.听

Dowell Lab

The Dowell Lab investigates transcriptional regulation through a combination of genetics and biologically informed machine learning approaches. They have developed techniques to interrogate the initial stages of RNA synthesis and dissect the role of the functional RNAs known as enhancer RNAs (鈥渆RNAs鈥). They apply these tools to understand cells with abnormal chromosome numbers, such as trisomy 21 (causing Down syndrome), many cancers, and liver regeneration.

Ferguson Lab

The Ferguson Biomechanics and Biomimetic Lab studies how the microstructure, composition, and material properties of tissues influence mechanical behavior. Further, they examine how these properties change with disrupted mechanical loading, aging, or disease.

Hough Lab

The Hough Lab studies the physical properties of naturally disordered proteins using experimental physics, computational biology, and cell biology. They leverage their discoveries about proteins in healthy cells to understand how disordered proteins contribute to Alzheimer鈥檚 and Parkinson鈥檚 disease.

Link Lab

The Link Lab examines the cellular and molecular basis of age-associated neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. They focus on the mechanisms by which specific proteins central to these diseases induce pathology.听