Prof. Howard Cedar

My research at IMRIC actually began when I entered NYU in 1964. That's when I started thinking about genetics and the genetic ‘book.’

For the last 50 years, scientists have been asking “What's the machinery for translating the genetic information? What's in that genetic ‘book’ and how does it all work?” Well, as it turns out that it's not about the book, but rather how that book is read. DNA has letters and sentences just like any other text, and at IMRIC we are learning how to chemically circle or underline the text to turn it on or off. That's DNA methylation. This is what our IMRIC team is now doing in its collaboration with Dr. Moshe Szyf at McGill University in Montreal.

It’s an important step in understanding human development, and a very important breakthrough in the treatment and diagnosis of genetic diseases.