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Jef D. Boeke (/ˈbuːkə/ BOO-kə) is an American geneticist who is currently the founding director of the Institute for Systems Genetics at NYU Langone Medical Center. From 1986 to 2014 he was on the faculty of The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where he was the founding director of the High Throughput (HiT) Center. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the National Academy of Sciences.

Boeke received a Bachelor's degree summa cum laude in Biochemistry in 1976 from Bowdoin College. He is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa chapter at Bowdoin. He then received a PhD in Molecular Biology from Rockefeller University in 1982, where he worked with Peter Model and Norton Zinder on the genetics of the filamentous phage. He did his postdoctoral work at The Whitehead Institute of MIT as a Helen Hay Whitney Postdoctoral Fellow with Gerald Fink.

Boeke is primarily known for his pioneering fundamental genetic and biochemical work on understanding the mechanisms of DNA transposition. He along with Gerald Fink discovered the mechanism by which yeast Ty1 transposable elements move via an RNA intermediate. He coined the term "retrotransposon" to describe transposable elements that move via this process. These retrotransposons are distantly related to retroviruses such as HIV.

Boeke is currently leading an international team of collaborators in an effort to construct a synthetic version of the entire genome of Baker's Yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It was reported in March 2014, that Boeke along with this team had synthesized the third smallest chromosome, chromosome III. The synthetic chromosome was designed to be shorter and more stable than the original. The effort to complete all 16 chromosomes of S. cerevisiae is currently underway and is reportedly half complete.

He is one of the co-founders of Genome Project-Write aiming at synthesis of human genome, and leader of the “Dark Matter Project” to begin parsing the function of non-coding DNA.

References

1. "Scientists Synthesize First Functional "Designer" Chromosome in Yeast". Youtube. NYU Langone Health. May 27, 2014. Retrieved May 15, 2023. I'm Jeff Boeke...
2. ^ "About our director". NYU Langone Medical Center. Archived from the original on February 16, 2015. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
3. "High Throughput Biology". Johns Hopkins Medical Institute. Archived from the original on September 22, 2019. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
4. "Members of the American Academy of Sciences" (PDF). American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
5. "Members of the National Academy of Sciences". National Academy of Sciences. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
6. "Alumni". Bowdoin College. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
7. "Authors - Jef Boeke". Biomed Central. Retrieved March 2, 2015.
8. Boeke, JD; Garfinkel, DJ (1985). "Ty elements transpose through an RNA intermediate". Cell. 40 (3): 491–500. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(85)90197-7. PMID 2982495. S2CID 24690915.
9. Rose, Sam (June 12, 2014). "Jef Boeke on the lure of retrotransposons". Biomed Central.
10. Shukman, David (March 27, 2014). "Scientists hail synthetic chromosome advance". BBC News. Retrieved March 28, 2014.
11. Annaluru, Narayana; et al. (March 27, 2014). "Total Synthesis of a Functional Designer Eukaryotic Chromosome". Science. 344 (6179): 55–58. Bibcode:2014Sci...344...55A. doi:10.1126/science.1249252. PMC 4033833. PMID 24674868.
12. "Sc 2.0 project website". Retrieved March 2, 2015.
13. Callaway, Ewen (March 27, 2014). "First synthetic yeast chromosome revealed". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2014.14941. S2CID 88104990.

• Living people
• American geneticists
• Bowdoin College alumni
• Rockefeller University alumni
• 1954 births
• Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology