Short bio
Ben is Head of Generative Genomics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge. His research uses deep mutational scanning and machine learning to understand, predict and engineer how changes in sequence alter the activities and regulation of proteins and RNAs. He co-founded the Barcelona Collaboratorium for Modelling and Predictive Biology and the company ALLOX, is a fellow of the Royal Society, and, amongst other prizes, was awarded the EMBO Gold Medal. 17 alumni from Ben’s lab are now group leaders in institutes across the world.
Research interest
The goal of the new Generative Genomics program at the Wellcome Sanger Institute is to combine data production at scale with AI/machine learning to accelerate our ability to understand, predict and engineer biological systems. Towards this goal we have developed methods to quantify the effects of millions of sequence variants on the properties of proteins and RNAs, including their stability, aggregation, binding affinities to other proteins, DNA and drugs, allostery, and expression. This has included site saturation mutagenesis of >1000 human protein domains and >500 alternatively spliced exons, using mutations to probe the structures of amyloid nucleation transitions states, and generating the first complete experimental allosteric maps of proteins, including protein interaction domains, enzymes, receptors, and transcription factors.