PiBS Faculty Laboratories

Background

Student pipetting in lab

Students attending laboratories for PiBS graduate with the following degrees:

  • Biochemistry
  • Biophysics
  • Genetics & Genomics
  • Molecular & Translational Medicine
  • Nutrition & Metabolism
  • Orofacial & Skeletal Biology
  • Pathology
  • Physiology
  • Virology, Immunology, & Microbiology

Final degree decisions are chosen by the student in consultation with their advisor/mentor(s) primarily based on curriculum and relevance to their research.

Scroll down to see a list of laboratories and search any of the keywords in the table below to learn more about our areas of research.

List of laboratories

Disclaimer

This list may not be comprehensive and is updated yearly. There may be more faculty eligible for PiBS rotations than listed here. Additionally, faculty on this list are not guaranteed to be offering rotations in the next academic year. Only faculty members can confirm whether or not they are able to take rotating students each year.

Blower Lab | Michael Blower

Keywords: microscopy, genetics, genomics, CRISPR, human cells

Degrees awarded: Biochemistry, Genetics & Genomics

About Our Lab

Each time a cell divides the correct number of chromosomes must be segregated to each daughter cell. Failures in chromosome segregation lead to an incorrect chromosome content (aneuploidy), which is highly correlated with cancer and is a leading cause of birth defects and developmental diseases in humans. Accurate chromosome segregation requires a dramatic transformation of the genome, which impacts all aspects of chromatin structure and RNA metabolism.

The long-term goal of my laboratory is to understand proteins that link RNA to DNA and chromokinesins contribute to chromatin structure and DNA repair in interphase and accurate chromosome segregation during mitosis. We are currently focused on: 1) how transcription is silenced during mitosis and restarted following mitosis, 2) how non-coding RNAs are removed from chromatin during mitosis, 3) how the chromokinesin Kif4a contributes to chromosome structure and DNA repair.

Website: https://www.bumc.bu.edu/biochemcellbio/profiles/michael-blower/

Cherry Lab | Jonathan Cherry

Keywords: Neuroinflammation, head trauma, microglia, neuroscience, neurodegeneration

Degrees awarded: Biochemistry, Genetics & Genomics, Molecular & Translational Medicine, Pathology, and others

About Our Lab

My research interests focus on understanding how neuroinflammation after repetitive traumatic brain injury contributes to neurodegeneration using human postmortem samples from BU brain banks. Our main disease of interest is chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), but we also look at AD, PD, FTLD, and many other neuropathologies. My group is interested in the role microglia and inflammatory cytokines play in the early onset of hyperphosphorylated tau accumulation and spread. We use next generation sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and histology to exam neuroinflammatory changes across disease spectrum.

My research also extends to histology analysis and machine learning. I’m the director of the BU digital pathology core. This research entails exploring novel ways and techniques to analyze human postmortem tissue and develop machine learning algorithms to better understand neuropathology.

Website: https://www.bu.edu/cte/profile/jon-cherry/

Is your lab missing from this page? Visit this webpage for instructions on how to join.