Gaelen Hess
Position title: Assistant Professor
Email: ghess3@wisc.edu
Phone: (608)890-3018
Address:
Biomolecular Chemistry
High-throughput functional genomics for precision medicine
- Address
- WIMR West Wedge 2768
- Education
- Ph.D. Harvard University, Postdoctoral Research Stanford University
- Lab Website
- https://www.thehesslab.org/
- Research Fields
- Cell biology, Computational, Systems, and Synthetic Biology, Genomics and Proteomics
Research Description:
For precision medicine to realize its potential, we need to understand the connection between genotypes and phenotypes to assess a patient’s disease risk and prescribe optimal treatments. Additionally, we need potent and targeted therapeutic strategies that take advantage or correct the genetic susceptibilities in afflicted tissue (e.g., tumors). In the Hess Lab, we use high-throughput functional genomics and genome engineering tools (e.g., CRISPR) to answer these questions to advance the goals of precision medicine and improve human health. In particular, the lab focuses on (1) understanding genetic factors that regulate disease risk and therapeutic response, (2) discovering biomolecules that can engineer and manipulate mammalian cells, and (3) developing functional genomics technologies.
Representative Publications:
Search Google Scholar for more publications by Gaelen Hess
- Schwartz CI, Abell NS, Li A, Aradhana, Tycko J, Truong A, Montgomery SB, Hess GT. Towards optimizing diversifying base editors for high-throughput studies of single- nucleotide variants. bioRxiv. 2024 Nov 19;. doi: 10.1101/2024.11.18.621003.
- Liila-Fogarty SM, Boyum GE, Schwabe CL, Hess GT. A High-Throughput Screen for Antiproliferative Peptides in Mammalian Cells Identifies Key Transcription Factor Families. ACS Synth Biol. 2024 Nov 15;13(11):3548-3562. doi: 10.1021/acssynbio.4c00337.
- Tycko J, DelRosso N, Hess GT, Aradhana, Banerjee A, Mukund A, Van MV, Ego BK, Yao D, Spees K, Suzuki P, Marinov GK, Kundaje A, Bassik MC, Bintu L. High-Throughput Discovery and Characterization of Human Transcriptional Effectors. Cell. 2020 Dec 23;183(7):2020-2035.e16. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2020.11.024. •Han K, Jeng EE, Hess GT, Morgens DW, Li A, Bassik MC. Synergistic drug combinations for cancer identified in a CRISPR screen for pairwise genetic interactions. Nat Biotechnol. 2017 May;35(5):463-474. doi: 10.1038/nbt.3834.
- Hess GT, Frésard L, Han K, Lee CH, Li A, Cimprich KA, Montgomery SB, Bassik MC. Directed evolution using dCas9-targeted somatic hypermutation in mammalian cells. Nat Methods. 2016 Dec;13(12):1036-1042. doi: 10.1038/nmeth.4038.