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Biography
Dr. Henry Levin is the head of the Section of Eukaryotic Transposable Elements. He received his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and then was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University with Jef Boeke. Dr. Levin’s studies on the LTR retrotransposons in fission yeast identified mechanistic details of particle formation, reverse transcription, and integration. This research led to innovative methods of DNA sequencing that revealed integration behavior of transposable elements. With these methods the laboratory demonstrated that transposable element integration in fission yeast occurs primarily at promoters resulting in altered gene expression. These sequencing methods were also applied to studies of HIV-1 and provided new insight into the integration behavior of HIV-1. In addition, Dr. Levin develops novel technologies that rely on transposable elements to characterize genetic function genome-wide. Dr. Levin has organized several conferences and symposia on transposon biology and retrovirus replication.