Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics

Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
Name	Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics
Established	2003
Type	Research institute
City	Princeton
State	New Jersey
Country	United States
Parent	Princeton University

Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics is an interdisciplinary research institute at Princeton University emphasizing quantitative, computational, and experimental approaches to biological systems. The institute connects faculty and students across departments to address problems in genetics, genomics, systems biology, and computational biology by integrating methods from molecular biology, physics, chemistry, mathematics, and computer science. It hosts collaborative projects, graduate and undergraduate education, and cores for high-throughput experiments and data analysis.

History

Founded in 2003 during an expansion of interdisciplinary initiatives at Princeton University, the institute was named following a major gift from alumni Robert H. Lewis and Adrian Sigler and with institutional support from the university's administration including Tilghman, Patricia-era leadership and trustees associated with the Princeton Corporation. Early faculty recruits included scholars with appointments in Molecular Biology, Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Computer Science who had previously collaborated with investigators at Broad Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Stanford University, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Over its history the institute forged partnerships with national funding agencies such as the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and private foundations including the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Mission and Research Focus

The institute's stated mission emphasizes integrative approaches linking experimental and computational methods to understand genomes, regulatory networks, and cellular systems, aligning with priorities at National Institutes of Health, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and academic centers like Salk Institute and Max Planck Society. Research themes include systems-level analysis of gene regulation, genome evolution, single-cell biology, microbial ecology, and synthetic biology, intersecting with methodologies from Statistics, Applied Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, and Chemistry. Faculty projects frequently collaborate with clinical researchers at institutions such as NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, University of Pennsylvania Health System, and consortia like the Human Genome Project-linked initiatives and the ENCODE Project.

Academic Programs and Education

The institute supports graduate education through joint programs with the Princeton Graduate School, offering rotations and advising for students affiliated with departments including Molecular Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Computer Science, and Chemistry. Undergraduate offerings include interdisciplinary courses cross-listed with Lewis-Sigler School-style curricula and participation in research programs alongside faculty who previously trained at places like Caltech, University of California, Berkeley, Yale University, University of Chicago, and Columbia University. Postdoctoral scholars and visiting investigators often arrive from labs associated with awards such as the MacArthur Fellowship, NIH Director's Pioneer Award, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator appointments, and fellowships from the Simons Foundation and Fulbright Program.

Facilities and Resources

Laboratory and computational infrastructure include core facilities for next-generation sequencing, mass spectrometry, high-performance computing clusters, and microscopy suites similar to those at Broad Institute and Wellcome Sanger Institute. The institute's building houses shared wet-lab space, bioinformatics workstations, and collaborative meeting rooms used for symposia with speakers from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, and industry partners such as Illumina, Thermo Fisher Scientific, and Google DeepMind. Data management and analysis pipelines leverage software and standards developed in consortia like Galaxy Project, Bioconductor, and repositories patterned after GenBank and Sequence Read Archive.

Notable Research and Contributions

Investigations from the institute have advanced understanding of transcriptional regulation, regulatory network inference, and evolutionary genomics, producing work cited alongside studies from ENCODE Project, 1000 Genomes Project, Human Microbiome Project, and Cancer Genome Atlas. Contributions include development of algorithms for single-cell RNA-seq analysis comparable to tools from Satija Lab and methodological innovations in network reconstruction akin to approaches from Eisen Lab and Alon, Uri's systems biology studies. Collaborative projects addressed microbial community dynamics with partners working in the tradition of Stuart, Roy-style ecological genomics and experimental evolution following frameworks set by Lenski, Richard E. and comparative genomics approaches used at Sanger Institute.

Leadership and Affiliations

The institute is administratively situated within Princeton University and led by directors appointed from faculty with joint affiliations across departments such as Molecular Biology, Computer Science, and Physics. Past and current directors have held prior positions at institutions including Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University School of Medicine, and research organizations like the National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Institutional collaborators and affiliated centers include the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment, and external partnerships with Broad Institute, Salk Institute, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, and corporate research groups in the biotechnology sector.

Category:Princeton University research institutes