Bejerano Lab, Stanford University

As outlined in our Background and Research Interests sections, the Bejerano Lab focuses on studying the cis-regulatory landscape of the human genome.

Scope. Until recently human regulatory sequences could not be traced to their orthologs outside the vertebrate clade (i.e., to fly, worm or yeast). As a result, our interests are centered on vertebrate genomes and model organisms, in particular mouse and zebrafish. Recently, human cis-regulatory orthologs have been found in lancelet, a non-vertebrate chordate, which serves to widen our direct interests.

Projects. Projects in the Bejerano lab fall into four wide categories:

Function: We are interested in the different functions served by regulatory elements (including enhancers, repressors and insulators). We work to understand how these functions are encoded, from the individual binding site level (~10bp), through functional regulatory elements (0.1-10kb) to the full gene regulatory domain (0.001-1Mb) and whole genome landscape (3Gb).
Evolution: Our interests span the origins of cis-regulatory elements and their on-going evolution. Particular interests include clustering, co-option and dispensability of human regulatory elements.
Human Disease: We have a keen interest in exposing and understanding the contribution of cis-regulation to human disease. Current work includes the study of mutations that disrupt limb formation.
Evo Devo: Stickleback fish are an appealing emerging model organism for the study of adaptation, as these ocean dwellers have over the last 10,000 years repeatedly adapted to colonize newly formed freshwater lakes. Other interests in the lab include human and other vertebrate trait evolution.

Additional interests in the lab include the study of placenta evolution and development, and early sex determination. We are also obviously interested in human ultraconserved elements in all the above contexts.

Methodology. The Bejerano Lab combines computational and functional work. Members of the lab range from the pro software engineer and computer science students to hardcore developmental and molecular biologists. Funded collaborations include work with David Kingsley (Stanford), Nadav Ahituv (UCSF), Francois Spitz (EMBL) and Julie Baker (Stanford).

We are always looking for the best suited people to join us.
We also have a keen interest in carefully expanding our collaborations with labs of intersecting interests and complementary strengths.