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Introduction to Program

The goal of the Chemical Biology Program is biological discovery, and its approach is the seamless integration of principles and experi­mental techniques drawn from both chemistry and biology.

The program spans the Cambridge and Boston campuses and engages faculty from the Departments of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Microbi­ology and Genetics, Systems Biology, Cell Biology, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and Molecular and Cell Biology; and from affiliated institutions, including Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Insti­tute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Broad Institute of Harvard and MIT.

The Chemical Biology Program will equip students with the appropriate experimental and theoretical approaches to use or develop chemical tools for understanding biological processes.

Courses offered by the program will emphasize concepts, unsolved (or partially solved) problems, and novel technology along with an understanding of how and why chem­ical approaches can drive new experiments and deliver novel insight. Students should leave the program better able to identify important unsolved problems in biology and with an appreciation of how to choose problems for which chemical approaches will be productive.

For more information, please visit http://chembio.med.harvard.edu. 

Admissions Requirements

Chemical Biology will admit students with strong backgrounds in chemistry or biology. Those with biological backgrounds will need to learn the requisite chemical skills, and those with chemical backgrounds will need to acquire a deep understanding of how biolog­ical systems function.

Scores on the general Graduate Record Examination (GRE) are required and one subject GRE in a relevant field is recom­mended. TOEFL is required of all foreign applicants other than those whose native language is English.

Online submission of the application is required. Please refer to the GSAS Admissions Page for further information on applying. Students should request infor­mation from:

After being accepted for admission, applicants are encouraged to make arrange­ments with the administrator of the Chemical Biology Program (617-432-0984) to visit the University.

Degree Requirements

Students will have an opportunity to discuss which courses and what labs would be appro­priate to rotate in according to their interests and goals with both co-directors.

Coursework

Students are required to take MedSci300: Conduct of Science and six additional courses chosen in consultation with the codirectors. The Chemical Biology Program offers two courses in addition to the many relevant courses available at Harvard and MIT:

CB 2100: Introduction to Chemical Biology I. This introductory course examines key areas of biology from a chemical perspec­tive, discusses the use of chemical approaches to study biological systems, and explores new strategies to treat diseases.

CB2200: Introduction to Chemical Biology II. This course will provide a survey of major topics, technologies, and themes in chemical biology, with hands-on exposure to a variety of experimental approaches, followed by an in-depth introduction to proposal writing.

Laboratory Rotations

Students are required to complete a minimum of two laboratory rotations, preferably one in a laboratory with a strong biological emphasis and another in a laboratory with a strong chemical emphasis. Rotations will last approxi­mately ten weeks, allowing time for students to accomplish a substantial body of work. Additional rotations beyond the minimum two are encouraged. Laboratory rotations will be approved by the codirectors. At least one of the rotations should be in the laboratory of a Chemical Biology Program faculty member.

Preliminary Qualifying Exams (PQE)

The aim of the PQE is to assess the student’s ability to review research in a particular field, to identify a problem or formulate a central hypothesis that is significant for the field, to design line(s) of experimentation to address the problem or test the hypothesis, and to describe how she or he will interpret the data that would result from the proposed experiment. The topic for the proposal may be related to a student’s dissertation research or the topic may be completely independent.

Students may take the exam in the fall term (by the end of October) or in the spring term (by March 15) of their second year. It is advised that the student completes the teaching requirement in the semester without the PQE.

Teaching Requirement

All students are required to serve as a teaching assistant for one course by the end of their second year of graduate study. The course should be relevant to chemical biology but need not be one of the core courses.

Dissertation Research

After passing the PQE, a dissertation advisory committee (DAC) of at least three members (not including the dissertation advisor) must be appointed by the end of October of the student’s third year and a meeting scheduled by the end of December. Subject to program approval, any three faculty members may serve on the committee.

The role of the DAC is to assist the student in defining the dissertation project; review scientific progress; offer critical evalu­ation, suggesting extension or modification of objectives; arbitrate differences of opinion between the student and the advisor if they arise; and decide when the work accomplished constitutes a dissertation. The hope is that the committee will help students get their research off to a good start and serve as a resource for students at any point during their graduate career. 

Participating Faculty and Their Research Interests

Jon Clardy, Professor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Program Co­director. Discovery of biologically active small molecules, biosynthesis, x-ray crystallography.

Gregory Verdine, Erving Professor of Chemis­try, Program Co-director. Protein-nucleic acid interactions; transcriptional regulation; x-ray crystallography.

Stephen C. Blacklow, Assistant Professor of Pathology. Molecular basis for specificity in protein folding and protein-protein interactions .

James Bradner, Instructor of Medicine, The Bradner Lab. Studies gene regulation using small molecules as probes.

Vlad Denic, Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology. Lipidomics, insertion of tail-anchored proteins into lipid bilayers, assembly of lipids into the double autophago­somal membrane.

Ulrike Eggert, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemical Biology. Chemical approaches to cell division.

Rachelle Gaudet, PhD, Associate Professor in Molecular and Cellular Biology. Structural studies of the stereochemistry of signaling and transport through biological membranes.

Nathanael Gray, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemical Biology. Small molecules.

Deb Hung, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Chemical genetics approach to bacterial pathogenesis.

Daniel Kahne, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Professor of Biological Chem­istry and Molecular Pharmacology. Biological mechanisms.

Randy King, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology. Regulation of mitosis and chromosome segre­gation.

Eric Jacobsen, Sheldon Emery Professor of Chemistry. Mechanistic and synthetic chemistry .

Stephen Liberles, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology. Molecules, receptors, and neural circuits involved in olfaction and instinctive behavior.

David R. Liu, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Molecular evolution of proteins, nucleic acids, and synthetic molecules to probe biology; development of DNA-templated organic synthesis; reaction of discovery; creation of synthetic biotic systems.

Gavin MacBeath, Assistant Professor of Chem­istry and Chemical Biology. Chemical biology and proteomics.

Timothy Mitchison, Professor of Cell Biol­ogy. Cytoskeleton dynamics; mechanism of mitosis and cell locomotion; small molecule inhibitors .

Andrew Myers, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Synthesis and study of com­plex molecules of importance in biology and human medicine.

Erin O’Shea, PhD, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Systems level and molecular analysis of signaling pathways, transcriptional regulation, and methods for expressing and assaying the proteins derived from an organism.

Randall Peterson, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine. Chemical and genetic approaches to studying diseases of the blood and the circula­tory system.

Tom Roberts, Professor of Pathology. Kinases, kinase inhibitors, cancer and aging. We work in wide variety of model systems and utilize approaches varying from systems biology to zebrafish genetics.

Alan Saghatelian, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Development and application of liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry based (LC-MS) global metabolite profiling as a general discovery tool in chemical biology

Adrian Salic, PhD, Assistant Professor of Cell Biology. Mechanisms of vertebrate hedgehog signaling.

Stuart Schreiber, Morris Loeb Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Forward and reverse chemical genetics: using small mol­ecules to explore biology.

Matthew Shair, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology. Organic synthesis and chem­ical biology.

Pamela Silver, Director of the Systems Biology Program. Genome organization, pathways in disease, synthetic biology and bio-energy.

Piotr Sliz, Assistant Professor of Pediatrics. microRNA biogenesis and structural biology computing.

Gregory Verdine, Erving Professor of Chemistry. Protein-nucleic acid in interactions; transcrip­tional regulation; x-ray crystallography.

Loren Walensky, PhD, Assistant Professor Chemical Biology. Biology of deregulated apop­totic and transcriptional pathways in cancer.

Suzanne Walker, Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics. Chemical biology applied to microbial systems.

Christopher T. Walsh, Hamilton Kuhn Profes­sor of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Phar­macology, Harvard Medical School. Enzymatic reaction and antibiotic synthesis mechanisms.

Priscilla Yang, Assistant Professor of Microbiol­ogy and Molecular Genetics. Viral immunology and pathogenesis.

Xiaowei Zhuang, Assistant Professor of Chemis­try and Chemical Biology and of Physics. Single-molecule biophysics.

Sunney Xie, Professor of Chemistry. Single-molecule biophysics.

Leonard Zon, MD, PhD, Grousbeck Profes­sor of Pediatrics. Developmental biology of hematopoiesis and erythroid development.