Mark Groudine
Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
|
Primary Section: 41, Medical Genetics, Hematology, and Oncology Secondary Section: 22, Cellular and Developmental Biology Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2001)
|
Biosketch
Groudine and colleagues have shown that the packaging and 3D organization of DNA changes by type of tissue, and that this influences gene expression. Groudine’s work led to the discovery of a region of DNA that helps to control the expression of hemoglobin, the oxygen-transporting protein in red blood cells. A specific type of anemia, called thalassemia, occurs when this region of DNA is missing. Similar DNA regions have been discovered for other genes and have been implicated in other diseases, including a type of lymphoma. Dr. Groudine served as director of the Hutch’s Basic Sciences Division from 1995 to 2004, deputy director of Fred Hutch from 1997 to 2016, executive vice president from 2005 to 2016, and as acting president and director of Fred Hutch in 2010 and 2014. Groudine is also Professor of Radiation Oncology at the University of Washington School of Medicine. He received his MD and PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1975 and 1976, respectively. For his many contributions to science and medicine, Groudine has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine and American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Research Interests
Groudine's lab uses molecular, biochemical and imaging approaches to understand the mechanisms underlying gene expression, chromatin structure and nuclear organization during differentiation and pathogenesis. During his career, he has contributed to the development of tools to study gene expression and nuclear organization, including use of DNAse I to distinguish different transcription and chromatin states; transcriptional run-ons to determine transcriptional activity, including at the levels of initiation, promoter proximal pausing and elongation; homologous and site-specific recombination to study the contribution of specific factor binding sites in controlling gene expression at their native loci rather than in transgenes; and algorithms to define chromosome adjacencies and the contribution of these adjacencies to gene expression and nuclear organization. The Groudine lab is a rich training environment, and many fellows trained in the laboratory have become leaders in their respective fields.
