Personal + Lab

Gill Bejerano, Assistant Professor of Developmental Biology and of Computer
Science.  Dr. Bejerano’s laboratory focuses on the study of the human genome.
He is co-discoverer of ultraconserved elements—stretches of non-coding DNA
that are better conserved and under more human purifying selection than
coding DNA is—and his laboratory strives to understand the many genomic
regions that are conserved between human and other vertebrates, whose
functions remain unknown in whole, or in part.  Particular interest is paid
to the many thousands of regions involved in gene transcription regulation
during vertebrate development.  The major interests are to (1) study the
origins and evolution of these regions, (2) how they encode their individual
as well as combined roles, (3) how they contribute to human disease, and (4)
how they contribute to speciation.  Combined, these goals provide insight
into the evolutionary history of our genome, including the emergence of novel
beneficial traits as well as deleterious phenotypes.  Dr. Bejerano is a two
time recipient of the best paper by a young scientist award (RECOMB 1999,
2003), and his lab is supported by the Edward Mallinckrodt Jr. Foundation.
Please see http://bejerano.stanford.edu/


Personal

Gill Bejerano holds a BSc, summa cum laude, in Mathematics, Physics, and
Computer Science, and a PhD in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of
Jerusalem, Israel. Twice recipient of the RECOMB best paper by a young
scientist award, and a former Eshkol pre-doctoral Scholar and HHMI postdoc
with David Haussler at UC Santa Cruz. Gill is currently an Assistant
Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology and the Department of
Computer Science at Stanford university. As co-discoverer of ultraconserved
elements, his research focuses on deciphering the function and evolution of
the non-coding regions of the Human Genome. See http://bejerano.stanford.edu/


Lab

80 words:

Gill Bejerano. 
Understand the Human Genome through vertebrate comparative,
functional and paleo-genomics.  The functional landscape of
the Human Genome and its evolution, with particular focus on
vertebrate gene regulation and its contributions to
morphological diversity, development and human disease.
Encoding, functions, origins and evolution of proximal and
distal cis-acting regulatory elements.  The paradoxical
existence of ultraconserved elements.  Co-option of mobile DNA
elements (repeats) as a driving force in vertebrate evolution.
Interpreting ancestral genomes. See http://bejerano.stanford.edu

105 words:

Gill Bejerano's lab focuses on the study of the human genome. As
co-discoverer of ultraconserved elements, Gill's lab strives to
understand the many genomic regions that are conserved between human
and other vertebrates, whose functions remain unknown in whole, or in
part.  Particular interest is paid to the thousands of regions
involved in gene transcription regulation during vertebrate
development. The major interests are to (1) study the origins and
evolution of these regions, (2) how they encode their individual as
well as combined roles, and (3) how they contribute to human disease.
Combined, these goals provide insight into the evolutionary history of
our genome, including the emergence of novel beneficial traits as
well as deleterious phenotypes. See http://bejerano.stanford.edu