{"id":52,"date":"2013-02-20T17:07:34","date_gmt":"2013-02-20T17:07:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/?page_id=52"},"modified":"2014-11-11T22:36:32","modified_gmt":"2014-11-12T04:36:32","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/?page_id=52","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ChristianThis web page is maintained by Christian Fr\u00f8kj\u00e6r-Jensen. I am currently a visiting lecturer \u00a0in\u00a0Andrew Fire<\/a>‘s lab at\u00a0Stanford<\/a>\u00a0but the majority of the reagents were developed as a post-doctoral fellow in\u00a0Erik Jorgensen<\/a>‘s laboratory at the\u00a0University of Utah<\/a>\/HHMI<\/a>\u00a0in collaboration with\u00a0S\u00f8ren Peter Olesen<\/a>‘s laboratory at\u00a0University of Copenhagen<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The web page describes methods that I have developed in collaboration with others in the Jorgensen lab to engineer the genome of the genetic model organism\u00a0C. elegans<\/em><\/a>. The aim is to facilitate the use of the techniques by maintaining updated protocols, links to reagents and resources as well as sharing information on common problems.<\/p>\n

C. elegans<\/em>\u00a0has contributed to the identification of many biological pathways (e.g. programmed cell death, RNA interference, microRNAs, and aging) that are conserved from simple organisms to humans. There is a lively research community that uses\u00a0C. elegans<\/em>\u00a0to study a wide variety of biological questions. For many\u00a0C. elegans<\/em>\u00a0researchers, an important part of experiments is to inactivate specific genes or to re-introduce modified genes into the organism. For example, the modified gene may carry a mutation observed in disease to test if that mutation causes the disease.<\/p>\n

C. elegans<\/em>\u00a0has appealing advantages that can\u00a0bridge qualitative approaches used to describe complex neural networks and tissues from multi-cellular organisms, and more quantitative approaches used in unicellular organisms: cell differentiation is deterministic, wiring of the small nervous system is invariant, and automated imaging allows simultaneous cell identification and fluorescence quantification. So in the spirit of\u00a0synthetic biology<\/a>, I am particularly interested in developing methods to facilitate reproducible genetic engineering of\u00a0C. elegans<\/em>\u00a0from standard parts. This includes developing\u00a0and improving\u00a0methods to manipulate the genome, improve expression of transgenes such as fluorophores and optogenetic effector proteins, and approaches to individually manipulate each cell in the small nervous system containing 302 cells.<\/p>\n

The scientific goals of my research projects are two-fold:<\/p>\n

(1) How do cells distinguish and regulate expression of endogenous genes\u00a0and at the same time silence foreign DNA such as virus or transposons?\u00a0How is this regulation achieved and restricted to discrete genomic locations to ensure reproducible and invariable development of the nervous system?<\/p>\n

(2) How does a simple nervous system process information? And how does the system respond to rewiring and perturbations of the system?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Download recent\u00a0Curriculum Vitae<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This web page is maintained by Christian Fr\u00f8kj\u00e6r-Jensen. I am currently a visiting lecturer \u00a0in\u00a0Andrew Fire‘s …<\/p>\n

About<\/span> Read more \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"full-width-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-52","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P3eUbV-Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1066,"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/52\/revisions\/1066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wormbuilder.org\/old\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}