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2004 Fellows Full Biographies

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Vamsi Mootha

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C.D.

Vamsi Mootha

Physician/Researcher

Assistant Professor of Systems Biology

Harvard Medical School

Assistant Professor of Medicine

Massachusetts General Hospital

Boston, Massachusetts

Age: 33

Vamsi

Mootha is a clinician-researcher who converts the promise of new

technologies such as genomics and proteomics into tangible, important

insights regarding basic biological processes and the sources of human

diseases. He specializes in the subcellular structures responsible

for energy metabolism: the mitochondria. Recently, Mootha and

colleagues have isolated peptide fragments from these organelles and

identified them with mass spectroscopy. By comparing the protein

fingerprints with gene expression databases, more than 100 previously

unknown mitochondrial proteins were identified. He used a similar,

coordinated approach to identify the gene that causes Leigh Syndrome

French Canadian variant, a fatal metabolic disease. In diseases

resulting not from a single gene but the interaction of sets of genes, he

introduced a computational method for identifying patterns of gene

activity in specific diseases. In type 2 diabetes, for example, this

method has identified aberrations in the regulation of genes related to a

specific metabolic pathway, an observation that may provide important

clues to the cause of a prevalent and devastating condition. As

importantly, Mootha has pioneered powerful, adaptable computational

strategies for mining data collected in laboratories throughout the world,

providing an efficient means to hunt down gene interactions that lead to a

wide variety of diseases.

Vamsi Mootha received a B.S. (1993) from Stanford University and an

M.D. (1998) from Harvard University Medical School. He completed his

internship and residency in internal medicine at the Brigham and Women’s

Hospital (1998-2001). In September 2004, he completed a postdoctoral

fellowship at the Whitehead and Broad Institutes and an instructorship in

medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

His research has been published in journals such as Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences USA, Cell, and Nature Genetics.

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Copyright 2004