Kerstin Lindblad-Toh
The Broad Institute
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Primary Section: 61, Animal, Nutritional, and Applied Microbial Sciences Secondary Section: 27, Evolutionary Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2020)
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Biosketch
Kerstin Lindblad-Toh is a molecular biologist recognized for her work on comparative genetics and genomics. She is known particularly for her studies on genome sequencing and analysis of vertebrate genomes and for her work developing the dog as a model for human disease. Lindblad-Toh was born in Stockholm, Sweden, and grew up in Sweden except for one year in England. She graduated from Stockholm University with a MSc in molecular biology in 1993, and earned a PhD in human genetics at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden in 1998. She was a postdoctoral fellow in genomics at the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research before becoming Co-Director of Genome Sequencing and Analysis. Professor Lindblad-Toh has since served in different Director capacities at the Broad Institute for more than fifteen years. She is a full professor at Uppsala University and one of the founders of Science for Life Laboratory Sweden, where she has served in various Directors positions. She has won numerous awards, including an Honorary Doctor at the Swedish University of Agriculture Sciences and a Distinguished professor of the Swedish Medical Research Council. She is a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Science as well as the National Academy of Sciences.
Research Interests
Lindblad-Toh has almost 20 years of experience leading more than 20 vertebrate genome projects, focusing on genome sequencing and comparative analysis, canine and human disease gene mapping, as well as tool development for trait mapping, targeted sequencing and computational tools for comparative analysis as needed for genome projects. She has led the mouse genome project, the canine, equine, opossum, anolis lizard, stickleback and coelacanth genome projects, trying to address a variety of questions related to vertebrate genome evolution and the resulting bolology. In addition, she led the 29 mammals project to find all the functional elements in the human genome at 12-bp resolution. She is now working on the 200 mammals project to understand the function of the human genome at single base resolution. She is also a leader in the field of canine genetics, focusing on immunological and behavioral/psychiatric diseases and cancer, where her group has identified disease genes for a large number of diseases. She has led multiple project where knowledge of canine disease genes, has been (are being) used for the identification of human disease genes, including for obsessive compulsive disorder, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and multiple immunological diseases.
