Project · 2022 — 2025
Base-editing mutagenesis screens
An AI-guided screening platform with single-cell readouts that maps how individual mutations change the function of BAF chromatin remodelers, applied to kidney cancer and cell differentiation.
The question
BAF chromatin remodelers, including the PBAF complex, are among the most frequently mutated protein complexes in human cancer. Knowing which of those mutations matter, and why, is hard: each complex has many subunits, and the effect of most individual mutations is unknown.
The approach
As a postdoc in the Kadoch Lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Harvard Medical School, I invented a screening platform that combines base editing, which makes precise single-letter changes to DNA, with single-cell functional readouts and AI-driven analysis. The result is a map that links the structure of the complex to its function, mutation by mutation.
Where it’s going
The platform is being applied to clear cell renal cell carcinoma and to mammalian cell differentiation, with direct implications for new therapeutic and biomarker strategies. This work is currently under review.