Liau Lab
Principal Investigator: Brian Liau
Institution: Harvard University (Cambridge, MA)
Primary Subfield: Genetics/Genomics
Recruitment Status: ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
Project Summary Chemical genetic approaches are powerfully enabling for biological discovery and therapeutics development. The identification of mutant alleles that enhance or suppress the activity of chemical probes may not only validate on-target mechanism but also drive deeper understanding of a small molecule’s binding interactions, molecular mechanism of action, and downstream biological effects. Recent breakthroughs in genome editing technologies enable the systematic mutation of endogenous proteins at scale and directly in cells, opening new research paradigms for chemical genetic approaches. Exploiting these new technologies, our prior work helped pioneer the development of in situ CRISPR-mutational scanning approaches to systematically profile protein target(s) sequence-function relationships in their native cellular environment. When leveraged with chemical biology, these mutations in the target can be exploited as discovery tools to study small molecule mechanism of action and target biology, allowing us to uncover mechanisms of allosteric regulation, cell signaling, and cancer vulnerabilities. This chemical genomics platform allows us to unlock the serendipitous discove…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM153476-03: Integrating Chemical Genetic Approaches with Precision Genome Editing (2026)
- 5R01CA274437-04: Chemical Genetic Approaches to Study Chromatin Complexes (2026)
- 5R01CA274437-03: Chemical Genetic Approaches to Study Chromatin Complexes (2025)
- 5R35GM153476-02: Integrating Chemical Genetic Approaches with Precision Genome Editing (2025)
- 5R01CA274437-02: Chemical Genetic Approaches to Study Chromatin Complexes (2024)
Explore 700+ US Biology Labs on FindBioLabs.com