Dr. Jef Boeke, the founder of monoclonal antibodies specialist CDI Labs, Inc., currently works as a professor and director with New York University’s Langone Medical Center. As part of his role within the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Dr. Jef Boeke established the Institute for Systems Genetics (ISG).

1. Retrotransposon Studies at
Langone ISG’s Boeke Lab
By Jef Boeke

2. Introduction
• Dr. Jef Boeke, the founder of monoclonal antibodies specialist
CDI Labs, Inc., currently works as a professor and director
with New York University’s Langone Medical Center. As part
of his role within the Department of Biochemistry and
Molecular Pharmacology, Dr. Jef Boeke established the
Institute for Systems Genetics (ISG).
The NYU Langone ISG launched in 2014 as a global
destination for modern genetic research and countless related
activities. A considerable portion of ISG research is conducted
in the facility’s Boeke Laboratory. The lab primarily
researches various aspects of chromosome biology with a
special focus on retrotransposons, the mobile elements
present in the genomes of all eukaryotes.

3. Retrotransposon Studies
• Historically, much of the work of lab’s staff members centered
on investigating the Ty1 elements of yeast, which have many
of the same characteristics of retroviruses. With trends in NIH
funding away from more basic systems, more recent work has
focused on retrotransposons of humans and other mammals.
Current work is aimed at multiple biological aspects of the
human L1 element, which also transposes, but in a manner
distinct from that of retroviruses.
A more audacious goal on which work began in 2007 is the
redesign of chromosomes to a specific design standard, and
synthesis of those chromosomes. For more information on
this project, please see the Sc2.0 web site,
www.syntheticyeast.org