CSB Program Director

Uncas (1923) and Helen Whitaker Professor; Extramural Member of KIICR;

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Associate Member of the Broad Institute

Dr. Christopher Burge applies a combination of experimental and computational approaches to understand the regulatory codes underlying pre-mRNA splicing and other types of post-transcriptional gene regulation. His research aims to understand the code for RNA splicing: how the precise locations of introns and splice sites are identified in primary transcripts and how its specificity changes in different cell types. Toward this end, they  are mapping the RNA-binding affinity spectra of dozens of human RNA-binding proteins and integrating this information with in vivo binding and activity data.  The Burge lab is also studying the functions of 3’ untranslated regions, including their roles in mRNA localization and microRNA regulation. The lab uses a combination of computational and experimental approaches to address these questions.
 

Dr. Burge completed his Bachelor of Science at Stanford University in 1990, and continued graduate studies in computational biology at Stanford University, gaining his PhD in 1997 under the supervision of Samuel Karlin. During his time at Stanford he was responsible for developing algorithms for GENSCAN used in gene prediction for example the initial analysis of the Human Genome Project.

In 2001 he was awarded the Overton Prize for Computational Biology by the International Society for Computational Biology. He was awarded a Searle Scholar Award in 2003 for his research in the computational biology of gene expression. In 2007 he was awarded the Schering-Plough Research Institute Award (now known as the ASBMB Young Investigator Award) by the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology for his outstanding research contributions to biochemistry and molecular biology

(Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology)