Science AMA Series: I’m Haig Kazazian, a Johns Hopkins geneticist
studying how “jumping genes” have helped to shape our understanding of
genetic disease. AMA!
Abstract
Hi Reddit, my name is Haig Kazazian and I’m a geneticist at the Johns
Hopkins University School of Medicine. For the past 27 years, I’ve been
studying human genetics and I am passionately committed to understanding
how “jumping genes,” also known as retrotransposons, affect how
genetic diseases manifest in my patients. These pieces of DNA are
capable of moving around the genome and can potentially disrupt
functional genes and lead to diseases like hemophilia and muscular
dystrophy. Interesting fact about myself, in 1999, my colleague Arupa
Ganguly and I received a “cease and desist” letter from Myriad
Genetics, for studying the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes because they held the
patent. We became the first plaintiffs in the 2013 Supreme Court Case,
which unanimously ruled that naturally occurring DNA sequences aren’t
patent eligible. More on the ruling here [
http://www.scotusblog.com/2013/06/details-on-association-for-molecular-pathology-v-myriad-genetics-inc/].
I’ve recently published a review on the last fifty years of “jumping
gene” research and you can read all about it here:
[http://www.fasebj.org/content/31/9/3712.full]. I’ll be back at 1pm
ET today to answer your questions.