Christopher Burge

Christopher Burge is the Whitehead Career Development associate professor in the department of biology at MIT and an associate member at the Broad Institute. His research focuses on the mechanisms of post-transcriptional gene regulation using a combination of experimental and computational methods. One of his primary goals is to understand the RNA splicing code — that is, how the precise locations of exons and splice sites are identified in primary transcripts and how this code is altered in mammalian development and differentiation. In addition, his group studies the roles that microRNAs play in gene regulation and is developing methods to reliably predict microRNA regulatory targets and to understand their functions in gene networks. The long-term goal of this work is to understand how regulation at different points in gene expression is integrated to produce the appropriate spectrum and levels of mRNA and protein isoforms under particular conditions.

Learn more about research in the Burge laboratory here.