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Ben Lehner

Ben Lehner

Centre de Regulació Genòmica

Life & Medical Sciences

* 2018 - Coordinator of CRG Systems Biology Program * 2017 - EMBO Member * 2016 - EMBO Gold Medal * 2014 - Senior Group Leader, CRG * 2014-17 - AXA Chair in risk prediction in age-related diseases, CRG  * 2010 - EMBO Young Investigator * 2009 - ICREA Research Professor * 2007 - ICREA Junior Researcher * 2006 - Group Leader, EMBL-CRG Systems Biology Unit, Centre for Genomic Regulation, Barcelona * 2004-06 - Postdoctoral Fellow, Fraser Lab, The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute * 2004 - PhD University of Cambridge   * 2000 - BA Natural Sciences, University of Cambridge


Research interests

Many mutations, for example disease causing mutations in humans, are not harmful in all of the individuals who carry them. When do genetic changes result in phenotypic change? When do they not? How do mutations combine together to alter phenotypes?  Why is this and how can this be predicted? How and why do mutation rates vary across the genome?  How does the physiology and environment of one generation influence subsequent generations? How do chance events influence the characteristics of individuals?  These are the main questions that drive our research, and we use both experimental and computational approaches to address them. We choose model systems and approaches to best answer the question at hand, particularly model organisms where we can perform large-scale and highly quantitative genetic analysis. In short, we aim to identify, understand and predict how genetic variation occurs and when it results in phenotypic variation, both at the level of the typical outcome in a population and also in each particular individual.

Selected publications

– Seuma, Mireia; Faure, Andre J.; Badia, Marta; Lehner, Ben; Bolognesi, Benedetta 2021, ‘The genetic landscape for amyloid beta fibril nucleation accurately discriminates familial Alzheimer’s disease mutations’, Elife, 10, e63364.

– Supek, Fran; Lehner, Ben; Lindeboom, Rik G. H. 2021, ‘To NMD or Not To NMD: Nonsense-Mediated mRNA Decay in Cancer and Other Genetic Diseases’, Trends In Genetics, 37, 7, 657 – 668.

– Francisco Perez, Marcos; Shamalnasab, Mehrnaz; Mata-Cabana, Alejandro; Della Valle, Simona; Olmedo, Maria; Francesconi, Mirko; Lehner, Ben 2021, ‘Neuronal perception of the social environment generates an inherited memory that controls the development and generation time of C. elegans’, Current Biology, 31, 19, 4256 – +.

– Park, Solip; Supek, Fran; Lehner, Ben 2021, ‘Higher order genetic interactions switch cancer genes from two-hit to one-hit drivers’, Nature Communications, 12, 1, 7051.

ICREA Memoir 2021