Dr. Kathleen Burns

Biography

Kathleen Burns is a Full Professor in the PhD Program in Biological Biomedical Sciences at Harvard University. Her research focuses on the roles that mobile genetic elements play in human disease, particularly their impact on genome composition over evolutionary time across virtually all eukaryotic taxa. Contrary to the assumption that transposons are inert, non-functional 'junk DNA', her lab has pioneered methods for mapping transposable element insertion sites within the human genome, revealing their significant contributions to structural variation in human populations. Dr. Burns is well-known for her work on aberrant expression and activity of the long interspersed element-1 (LINE-1, L1) transposon in human cancers. She is actively developing ultrasensitive methods to detect the open reading frame 1 protein (ORF1p) for potential applications in cancer diagnostics. Ongoing projects in her lab examine the mutagenic mechanisms of the L1 open reading frame 2 protein (ORF2p) and their contributions to genome instability and cancer cell biology, including tumor immunology. Additionally, she is devising high throughput genetic and small molecule screens to develop new therapeutics informed by her understanding of L1 biology.

Research Interests