Group news

Ben Lehner elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (19/05/2023)

Ben Lehner elected as new Fellow of the Royal Society (10/05/2023)
The 362-year-old UK national academy of sciences recognises Dr. Lehner for his outstanding contributions to science made at the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona 

Hereditary factors that increase the likelihood of cancer mutations detailed in new study (05/07/2022)
A study of 11,000 cancer patients reveals 42 hereditary genes which predispose individuals to a higher number of mutations that correlate with a greater probability of developing cancer.

Abundant ‘secret doors’ on human proteins could reshape drug discovery (06/04/2022)
The number of potential therapeutic targets on the surfaces of human proteins is much greater than previously thought, according to the findings of a new study in the journal Nature.

One mutation or two? Researchers discover why some genes require one or two hits to promote cancer (15/12/2021)
DNA - also known as the 'book of life' - is written in a language that is still being deciphered, which is why it remains a challenge to translate what genes say into physical traits that make up an organism. For example, why do mutations only cause cancer sometimes and not others?

Cancer and dementia research projects funded by the “la Caixa” Foundation (21/07/2021)
The “la Caixa” Foundation has funded two research projects at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) which aim to identify new therapeutic targets for cancer and develop new prevention strategies for dementia.

First comprehensive map of amyloid plaque mutations opens new avenues for early detection of Alzheimer’s disease (09/03/2021)
The map will also help researchers better understand the biological mechanisms that control the onset of the disease

Scientists build machine learning-based algorithm to predict which cancer patients benefit from immunotherapy (28/10/2019)
The new technology’s potential is described today in Nature Genetics by researchers at IRB Barcelona, the Centre for Genomic Regulation and Radboud University

Researchers perform thousands of mutations to understand amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (20/09/2019)
Researchers from CRG and IBEC in Barcelona use a technique called high-throughput mutagenesis to study Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), with unexpected results.

Verónica Llorens and Ben Lehner awarded by the Catalan Society of Biology (24/07/2018)
CRG researchers Verónica Lloréns and Ben Lehner were acknowledged by the Catalan Society of Biology in the 3rd edition of their annual prizes in the categories of Young Investigator and Best Paper respectively.

Big Data analysis identifies new cancer risk genes (10/07/2018)
Researchers at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) in Barcelona developed a new method to systematically identify genes contributing to heritable cancer risk. Their work, which is published in Nature Communications, is a success story for data sharing and openness in science. Just three researchers identified new cancer genes only using publically available data

Summary

To what extent is it possible to predict the phenotypic differences amongst individuals from their completely sequenced genomes?  We use model organisms (yeast, worms) and computational analyses to understand when you can, and why you cannot, predict the biology of an individual from their genome sequence.  Individuals are thankfully all different, and our aim is to understand how these differences originate in the interactions between genetic, environmental, life history, parental and stochastic sources of variation.

Other information about the group

Puromycin Selection Portable Document Format

Puromycin vector sequences Microsoft Word