Welcome to the Burns Lab
The majority of our genome is highly repetitive sequence derived from the activities of self-propagating retrotransposons. Research in our lab focuses on roles these mobile genetic elements play in human disease. Despite their enormous impact on genome composition over evolutionary time and across virtually all eukaryotic taxa, transposons are often presumed to be inert, non-functional ‘junk DNA’. Our work is challenging that assumption.
Our group was among the first to develop methods for comprehensively mapping mobile DNA insertion sites in the human genome, which underscored that these are a significant source of structural variation (Cell, 2010). We have since studied the functional effects of inherited mobile element insertions using a combination of genetic approaches and molecular biology (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017) and are exploring their contributions to somatic mosaicism across human tissues. Our group has also shown that the expression of long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1, L1) ORF1p is a hallmark of human cancers (American Journal of Pathology, 2014), and that somatically-acquired L1 insertions occur during cancer evolution (Nature Medicine, 2015). Our lab is currently studying consequences of this activity for DNA repair and chromosomal instability in cancer cells (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, 2020, bioRxiv) and seeking to translate our understanding of this basic biology to improve our approaches to cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.
We invite you to explore our webpage, read about our work on mobile DNAs, and visit our laboratory in the Department of Pathology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
News
April 2025
Honored to give a Keynote address to start the Cold Spring Harbor Asia Repetitive and Mobile Genome meeting in Suzhou, China.
February 2025
Welcome to Dr. Filipe Martins! And congratulations on his Postdoc Mobility Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation! Filipe is a physician-scientist and medical oncologist who joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with Dr. Didier Trono.
January 2025
Welcome to Dr. Carolyn Hruban! Carlie joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. studies on early cancer detection with Dr. Victor Velculescu at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
December 2024
Congratulations to Jupiter, who won a best poster award at the 20th Annual Broad Retreat for their work on LINE-1 regulators!
July 2024
Welcome to our first BBS Ph.D. students! We are thrilled to have Audrey Muscato and Olivia Sacco joining the Burns lab.
And Maria Amodeo leading our collaborations with the Johnstone lab.
July 2024
Congratulations to Jack Heaps who leaves the lab to enroll in the McCombs School of Business at University of Texas, Austin!
Congratulations to Bryant Miller who leaves the lab to begin an M.D., Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins!
Congratulations to lab alumna Chloe Pacnya who returns from her Ph.D. studies at the University of Cambridge to join the Harvard Medical School class!
June 2024
Congratulations to Jupiter, who won a best poster award at the Harvard Medical School Pathology Research Celebration for their work on LINE-1 regulators!
April 2024
We're on our way to France for the International Congress on Transposable Elements. Congratulations to those who presented at the meeting!
March 2024
We are thrilled to team up with Katherine Chiappinelli on a new National Cancer Institute funded project to probe the immunologic effects of LINE-1 expression in cancer.
December 2023
Congratulations to Marty Taylor! He led a collaborative team to report the structure of ORF2p reverse transcriptase - out now in Nature. This animation describes activities of the protein.
Congratulations to Carlos Mendez-Dorantes! His review on LINE-1 biology is out in Genes & Development.
November 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Dicky Law for his postdoctoral fellowship award from the American Cancer Society!
October 2023
Welcome to Tomohiro ( Tom ) Kitano! Tom joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. studies on transposable element expression in early development with Dr. Haruhiko Siomi at Keio University School of Medicine in Japan.
September 2023
Congratulations to Marty Taylor and Connie Wu! Their paper on ORF1p as a circulating cancer biomarker is out in Cancer Discovery!
We're on our way to Canada for the Transposable element Keystone Symposium!
Congratulations to Marty who will give a talk on the structure of the ORF2p reverse transcriptase, and to Kathy who organized the meeting with Drs. Arkhipova and Malik. Check out the meeting report at Mobile DNA.
August 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Dicky Law for his postdoctoral fellowship award from the Charles A. King Trust!
July 2023
Congratulations to Phil Schofield who leaves the lab to begin medical school at University of California San Diego!
June 2023
The Burns lab is now part of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) graduate program at Harvard Medical School. Our doors are open for Ph.D. and M.D., Ph.D. rotation students - come science with us!
June 2023
Welcome to Aidan Burn! Aidan joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. studies on endogenous retroviruses with John Coffin's lab at Tufts University.
May 2023
We're on our way to Italy for the Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Gordon Research Conference!
Congratulations to Jennifer and Tatiana who will give talks from the Burns lab, and to Kathy who will give one of the Keynote addresses.
Wicked SMaHT that we're teaming up with the Bernstein and Lee labs to develop tools for the new NIH Common Fund Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) network!
March 2023
Join us right here in the Jimmy Fund Auditorium to hear Kathy's Keynote at the 2023 Center for Cancer Genomics Symposium!
January 2023
Thrilled to team up with Ömer Yilmaz and his lab at MIT for a Footbridge project on LINE-1 in colon cancer. Congratulations to Marty Taylor and Tatiana Cajuso Pons!
Excited to share new data that LINE-1 ORF1p, our "hallmark of cancer" is detectable in the peripheral blood!
Now on BioRxiv. Congratulations to Marty Taylor and Connie Wu!
November 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Tatiana Cajuso Pons who was named a Helen Gurley Brown fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute!
October 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Carlos Mendez-Dorantes for his participation in the Forbeck Foundation Scholars Program, and his presentation at the annual Scholars Retreat!
Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Karlow for her postdoctoral fellowship award from the American Cancer Society!
We're on our way to Cold Spring Harbor Labs for the Transposable Elements meeting. Congratulations to all the poster presenters from the Burns lab, and to Kathy who will give the opening night's Keynote address.
June 2022
We look forward to welcoming Dr. Esin ışık next month and congratulate her on her Postdoc Mobility Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation! Esin joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. in cancer biology at the University of Zurich with Dr. Pavel Janscak.
Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Karlow for her travel award to the FASEB Mobile DNA meeting in Ireland and support for her fellowship from the Harvard Medical School T32 Training Grant in Genetics!
May 2022
Welcome to Dr. Tatiana Cajuso Pons! Tatiana joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. studying the genomic impact of LINE-1 in colon cancer at the University of Helsinki with Dr. Lauri Aaltonen.
April 2022
Honored to share this Perspective on Repetitive DNA in Disease for Science.
February 2022
Welcome to Dr. Jennifer Karlow! Jennifer joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. studying epigenetic contributions to cancer development and dissemination at Washington University with Dr. Ting Wang.
January 2022
Welcome to Dr. Cheuk Ting ( Dicky ) Law! Dicky joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. studying LINE-1 elements in cancer at the University of Hong Kong with Dr. Chun Ming (Jack) Wong and Prof. Oi Lin ( Irene ) Ng.
December 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Lindsay Payer! Her paper on functions of Alu variants is out in Genome Research!
Our group was among the first to develop methods for comprehensively mapping mobile DNA insertion sites in the human genome, which underscored that these are a significant source of structural variation (Cell, 2010). We have since studied the functional effects of inherited mobile element insertions using a combination of genetic approaches and molecular biology (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017) and are exploring their contributions to somatic mosaicism across human tissues. Our group has also shown that the expression of long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1, L1) ORF1p is a hallmark of human cancers (American Journal of Pathology, 2014), and that somatically-acquired L1 insertions occur during cancer evolution (Nature Medicine, 2015). Our lab is currently studying consequences of this activity for DNA repair and chromosomal instability in cancer cells (Nature Structural and Molecular Biology, 2020, bioRxiv) and seeking to translate our understanding of this basic biology to improve our approaches to cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.
We invite you to explore our webpage, read about our work on mobile DNAs, and visit our laboratory in the Department of Pathology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
News
April 2025
Honored to give a Keynote address to start the Cold Spring Harbor Asia Repetitive and Mobile Genome meeting in Suzhou, China.
February 2025
Welcome to Dr. Filipe Martins! And congratulations on his Postdoc Mobility Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation! Filipe is a physician-scientist and medical oncologist who joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with Dr. Didier Trono.
January 2025
Welcome to Dr. Carolyn Hruban! Carlie joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. studies on early cancer detection with Dr. Victor Velculescu at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.
December 2024
Congratulations to Jupiter, who won a best poster award at the 20th Annual Broad Retreat for their work on LINE-1 regulators!
July 2024
Welcome to our first BBS Ph.D. students! We are thrilled to have Audrey Muscato and Olivia Sacco joining the Burns lab.
And Maria Amodeo leading our collaborations with the Johnstone lab.
July 2024
Congratulations to Jack Heaps who leaves the lab to enroll in the McCombs School of Business at University of Texas, Austin!
Congratulations to Bryant Miller who leaves the lab to begin an M.D., Ph.D. program at Johns Hopkins!
Congratulations to lab alumna Chloe Pacnya who returns from her Ph.D. studies at the University of Cambridge to join the Harvard Medical School class!
June 2024
Congratulations to Jupiter, who won a best poster award at the Harvard Medical School Pathology Research Celebration for their work on LINE-1 regulators!
April 2024
We're on our way to France for the International Congress on Transposable Elements. Congratulations to those who presented at the meeting!
March 2024
We are thrilled to team up with Katherine Chiappinelli on a new National Cancer Institute funded project to probe the immunologic effects of LINE-1 expression in cancer.
December 2023
Congratulations to Marty Taylor! He led a collaborative team to report the structure of ORF2p reverse transcriptase - out now in Nature. This animation describes activities of the protein.
Congratulations to Carlos Mendez-Dorantes! His review on LINE-1 biology is out in Genes & Development.
November 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Dicky Law for his postdoctoral fellowship award from the American Cancer Society!
October 2023
Welcome to Tomohiro ( Tom ) Kitano! Tom joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. studies on transposable element expression in early development with Dr. Haruhiko Siomi at Keio University School of Medicine in Japan.
September 2023
Congratulations to Marty Taylor and Connie Wu! Their paper on ORF1p as a circulating cancer biomarker is out in Cancer Discovery!
We're on our way to Canada for the Transposable element Keystone Symposium!
Congratulations to Marty who will give a talk on the structure of the ORF2p reverse transcriptase, and to Kathy who organized the meeting with Drs. Arkhipova and Malik. Check out the meeting report at Mobile DNA.
August 2023
Congratulations to Dr. Dicky Law for his postdoctoral fellowship award from the Charles A. King Trust!
July 2023
Congratulations to Phil Schofield who leaves the lab to begin medical school at University of California San Diego!
June 2023
The Burns lab is now part of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) graduate program at Harvard Medical School. Our doors are open for Ph.D. and M.D., Ph.D. rotation students - come science with us!
June 2023
Welcome to Aidan Burn! Aidan joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. studies on endogenous retroviruses with John Coffin's lab at Tufts University.
May 2023
We're on our way to Italy for the Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Gordon Research Conference!
Congratulations to Jennifer and Tatiana who will give talks from the Burns lab, and to Kathy who will give one of the Keynote addresses.
Wicked SMaHT that we're teaming up with the Bernstein and Lee labs to develop tools for the new NIH Common Fund Somatic Mosaicism across Human Tissues (SMaHT) network!
March 2023
Join us right here in the Jimmy Fund Auditorium to hear Kathy's Keynote at the 2023 Center for Cancer Genomics Symposium!
January 2023
Thrilled to team up with Ömer Yilmaz and his lab at MIT for a Footbridge project on LINE-1 in colon cancer. Congratulations to Marty Taylor and Tatiana Cajuso Pons!
Excited to share new data that LINE-1 ORF1p, our "hallmark of cancer" is detectable in the peripheral blood!
Now on BioRxiv. Congratulations to Marty Taylor and Connie Wu!
November 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Tatiana Cajuso Pons who was named a Helen Gurley Brown fellow at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute!
October 2022
Congratulations to Dr. Carlos Mendez-Dorantes for his participation in the Forbeck Foundation Scholars Program, and his presentation at the annual Scholars Retreat!
Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Karlow for her postdoctoral fellowship award from the American Cancer Society!
We're on our way to Cold Spring Harbor Labs for the Transposable Elements meeting. Congratulations to all the poster presenters from the Burns lab, and to Kathy who will give the opening night's Keynote address.
June 2022
We look forward to welcoming Dr. Esin ışık next month and congratulate her on her Postdoc Mobility Grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation! Esin joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. in cancer biology at the University of Zurich with Dr. Pavel Janscak.
Congratulations to Dr. Jennifer Karlow for her travel award to the FASEB Mobile DNA meeting in Ireland and support for her fellowship from the Harvard Medical School T32 Training Grant in Genetics!
May 2022
Welcome to Dr. Tatiana Cajuso Pons! Tatiana joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. studying the genomic impact of LINE-1 in colon cancer at the University of Helsinki with Dr. Lauri Aaltonen.
April 2022
Honored to share this Perspective on Repetitive DNA in Disease for Science.
February 2022
Welcome to Dr. Jennifer Karlow! Jennifer joins the lab after completing her Ph.D. studying epigenetic contributions to cancer development and dissemination at Washington University with Dr. Ting Wang.
January 2022
Welcome to Dr. Cheuk Ting ( Dicky ) Law! Dicky joins the lab after completing his Ph.D. studying LINE-1 elements in cancer at the University of Hong Kong with Dr. Chun Ming (Jack) Wong and Prof. Oi Lin ( Irene ) Ng.
December 2021
Congratulations to Dr. Lindsay Payer! Her paper on functions of Alu variants is out in Genome Research!
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