In honor of Jason Lieb
Jason Lieb unpacks DNA. Well, he studies how DNA is packaged and unpackaged, what controls this process, and why it causes some cells to proliferate and turn into cancer cells. Already, at a young age, Dr. Lieb has developed a technology that can pinpoint the genes that are active in certain cell types. And this could lead to better, more personalized cancer therapies.
“We can tell exactly what pieces of DNA are controlling when a gene gets turned on or off,” Dr. Lieb says. “It’s kind of like looking at the wiring inside a control panel instead of just looking at the buttons on the outside of the box.”
This is just the sort of discovery Dr. Lieb was hoping for when he became a biologist.
“My dad is a physicist and he influenced me a lot,” Dr. Lieb says. “But I knew I didn’t want to go into the mathematical sciences. I thought I could make a bigger impact in biology; I felt like I could get to the important questions faster because in biology there are fundamental discoveries being made every day.”
Dr. Lieb just made one of them. A pretty big one, too.