Benjamin R Williams

Harvard Medical School
Department of Genetics
77 Avenue Louis Pasteur
New Research Building, Rm 238
Boston, MA 02115
fax (617)432-6513

Research Interests

Homologue pairing is the physical alignment of homologous DNA. It is not known what cellular mechanism reads homology nor what molecular forces pair them. I am interested in understanding the underlying principles of homologue pairing by applying Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization (FISH). We are currently developing a FISH-based assay to allow high-throughput manipulation and identification of paired homologues which may provide new clues as to how homologues pair. See also homologue pairing.

Biographical Information

♦ Member of the Wu lab and Church lab
♦ 6th Year Graduate Student in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS) program at Harvard Medical School
♦ National Science Foundation Graduate Student Fellow
♦ Graduated with honors from Earlham College, Richmond Indiana (B.A. in Chemistry)

Graduate School Publications

1. Williams B.R., Bateman, J.R., Novikov, N.D., & Wu, C.-t. 2007. Disruption of Topoisomerase II perturbs pairing in Drosophila cell culture. --> Genetics. 177: 31-46. (full text or pdf)

2. Williams B.R. & Wu, C.-t. 2004. Does random X-inactivation reflect random choice between two X chromosomes? Genetics 167:1525-8. (full text)

3. Mitra, RD, Butty, V, Shendure, J, Williams, BR, Housman, DE, and Church, GM. 2003.; Digital Genotyping and Haplotyping with Polymerase Colonies. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. May 13;100(10):5926-31. (full text)