Broad Institute

In November of 2003, the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research became the cornerstone facility of the Broad Institute, a new research collaboration between Whitehead Institute, MIT and Harvard University. Under the direction of Eric Lander, who was a Whitehead Member, the Broad Institute leverages the strengths of its three founding institutions to create a new toolkit for genomic medicine.

Founded in 1990, the Whitehead/MIT Center for Genome Research grew to become one of the largest genome centers in the world and an international leader in the field of genomics and genetics.

When Lander first came to the Institute as a Whitehead Fellow in 1986—trained as a mathematician, not a biologist—Whitehead offered him what it offers all Fellows: an office, a computer, and an environment in which to take risks. Within just a few years, Lander parlayed that investment into a succession of stellar scientific discoveries.

In addition to sequencing the human genome, the Center played a leadership role in sequencing key model organisms like the mouse and chimp, as well as bread mold, pufferfish, and sea squirt, organisms that have proven instrumental in the search for regions of the genome that are conserved across multiple species.

Scientists at the Center pioneered the effort to identify the human genome’s single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), the single letter differences in DNA that underlie disease susceptibility and individual variation. The researchers then discerned that SNPs travel though populations in large blocks, suggesting that mapping genes for common diseases might be much easier than previously thought.

The Center’s functional genomics group, dedicated to translating sequencing data and technology into direct biomedical applications, has devised new genomic strategies for cancer diagnosis, developed a suite of bioinformatics tools, put a new twist on studies of human evolution, and developed methods for mapping disease across human populations.

Lander credits his team’s success to the unique resources he found at Whitehead and within the broader MIT community “I count myself extraordinary lucky to have accidentally found Whitehead Institute,” recounts Lander. “If I hadn’t fallen into this community, there is simply no way in the world that I could have done a tenth of the things that I’ve had the pleasure to do in my career. The Whitehead is an extraordinary confident community that knows what its standards are about and is not afraid to take bets on young people.”

The expansion of the Genome Center into Broad Institute serves as a catalyst for larger collaborative projects not easily accomplished in traditional laboratories.
For more information, visit the Broad Institute web site.

Last updated September 25, 2008.