Associate Professor of Medicine (Research)

Overview

Paul Bertone studied computer science and machine learning before carrying out his PhD in molecular and computational biology at Yale University. There he produced the first high-resolution transcription map of the human genome, the first genome-wide data for transcription factor binding sites in human cells, and the first proteome-wide assays of biochemical function. Dr. Bertone joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and based his research group at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), applying functional genomics to stem cell biology and embryonic development. He and his team determined the regulatory circuitry governing self-renewal of pluripotent cells in human and mouse, as well as transcriptional, epigenetic and chromatin remodeling factors orchestrating lineage commitment during exit from pluripotency and early differentiation. The Bertone lab then moved to the University of Cambridge, where they identified key transcriptional regulators of naïve pluripotency, described the first authentic naïve human pluripotent cells, and characterized lineage-specific transcription in mammalian embryos. They resolved a comprehensive time course of human preimplantation development from single-cell expression data, and performed cross-species analyses of embryogenesis in mouse, human and non-human primates. At Brown the Bertone lab focuses on cancer genomics, studying tumor-initiating neural stem cells that drive the onset and progression of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

Brown Affiliations

Research Areas