Cancer is caused by the accumulation of mutations in oncogenes and tumor suppressors.  In order to understand what causes cancer, we need to understand what causes mutations.  A major goal of the Engelward laboratory is to reveal the underlying causes of large scale sequence rearrangements that not only promote cancer, but that also contribute to aging and heritable diseases.

All large scale sequence rearrangements are caused by double strand breaks.  Therefore, repair of double strand breaks is pivotal for genome maintenance.  Homologous recombination is a critical DNA repair pathway for repairing double strand breaks in normal somatic cells.  In addition, homologous recombination is the only repair process that is able to fix broken replication forks that arise when a replication fork encounters a DNA lesion (such as a single stranded break).  Although generally accurate, misalignments during homologous recombination can lead to insertions, deletions, translocations, and loss of heterozygosity, all of which are known to contribute to cancer, aging, and heritable diseases.  In this laboratory, our goal is delineate the underlying causes of homologous recombination and to develop novel technologies to detect homologous recombination events in mammalian cells and mammals. 

 

The Engelward Laboratory [directions]

Department of Biological Engineering

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Office Phone for Bevin Engelward: 617-258-0260

Lab Phone: 617-253-6751

Lab Fax: 617-258-0499

New: Website for the MIT-CGI Collaboration in Applied Biological Sciences