Dr. Vamsi Mootha received his B.S. in Mathematical and Computational Science from Stanford University, and then earned his M.D. degree from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology at Harvard Medical School. After completing his internship and residency in internal medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, he worked as a visiting scientist at MDS Proteomics in Denmark. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Eric Lander’s laboratory at the Whitehead Institute.
Dr. Mootha is currently an Assistant Professor of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical
School, Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Center for Human Genetic Research at
Massachusetts General Hospital, and Associate Member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. In 2004 Dr. Mootha was named a MacArthur Foundation Fellow for his research on mitochondrial biology and integrative genomics.
Dr. Mootha’s research group is focused on mitochondrial biology. His team uses a combination of biochemical physiology, genomics, computation, and clinical medicine, to systematically identify the genes and networks underlying mitochondrial function in health and in disease. Using the new tools of genomics, his group is compiling a protein parts-list for this complex organelle and then using computational strategies to reverse-engineer the cell’s instructions for properly assembling these structures. With this information in hand, his group is systematically identifying the genes underlying rare but devastating diseases, such as mitochondrial respiratory chain disease and maternally inherited encephalomyopathies. His group is also exploring the mitochondrial-basis of some very common human diseases, such as the common form of type 2 diabetes. The longer-term goal of the group is to develop a predictive understanding of mitochondrial function that can be exploited in the development of novel therapies for disorders stemming from dysfunction of this organelle.
The laboratory is currently funded by grants
from the United
Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, Burroughs
Wellcome Fund, the Smith
Family Foundation, the Goldman
Philanthropic Partnerships, the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute, the National
Institutes of Health and the American
Diabetes Association.
Reference Links:
Department
of Systems Biology, Harvard Medical
School
Metabolism
Initiative at Broad Institute
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