Jeffrey M. Kidd, Ph.D.

Research

In genetics research, a major goal is to determine how variation in an organism's genetic make-up relates to visible differences. As a fertilized egg develops into an adult individual, cells divide and replicate a countless number of times. With trillions of cells, mistakes are bound to happen. Those errors in replication, combined with exposure to DNA-damaging agents like UV light, result in changes to an individual's genome. We plan to measure the amount of genetic variation in somatic cells, and the importance of that variation to the onset of diseases other than cancer, which is well established. We will adapt barcoding methods at the single-molecule scale and employ the polymerase chain reaction to target specific genomic loci that will demonstrate the extent of the phenomenon. We will then combine that approach with a statistical analysis to determine the proportion of variable alleles within somatic cellular populations. This work will shed light on the basis of diseases related to genomic variation within somatic cells, including hematological disorders, neurofibromatosis, and kidney disease.