Edwin Cuppen was appointed as Professor of Human Genetics and head of the Complex Genetics section, Dept of Medical Genetics, UMC Utrecht, the Netherlands, on 1st April 2009. He is also a senior staff scientist at the Hubrecht Institute for Developmental Biology and Stem Cell Research in Utrecht and since 2007 he has held an Endowed Chair of Genome Biology at the Biology Department of the University of Utrecht.
His scientific interests are in functional and personal genomics, for which he uses both experimental and bioinformatic approaches. The general aim is to understand the function of genomic elements and the effects of genetic variation on phenotypic diversity.
His research group has a long track record in high-throughput DNA sequencing and was the first in Europe to implement AB’s next-generation sequencing technology SOLiD. This platform is now used for genome resequencing and mutation detection/discovery, but also for small RNA sequencing, ChIP-Seq, and structural variation detection.
More info on his research in the Hubrecht Institute.
In 2005, Edwin Cuppen was awarded a prestigious European Young Investigators Award for his work on naturally occurring and induced genetic variation in the laboratory rat. He was one of the first to generate gene knockout models in the rat and recently showed the widespread effect of copy number variation on gene expression levels.
Dr. Cuppen is also CSO of the biotech startup company
InteRNA Technologies, which aims to exploit the miRNA IP generated by the Hubrecht Institute, and is cofounder of InteRNA Genomics, which provides bioinformatic services for the analysis of next-generation sequencing data, including small RNA discovery and profiling.
Email:
ecuppen@niob.knaw.nl
Keynote papers Guryev, V., Saar, K., Adamovic, T., Verheul, M., van Heesch, S., Cook, S., Pravenec, M., Aitman, T., Jacob, H., Shull, JD., Hubner, N., and Cuppen, E. (2008). Distribution and functional impact of DNA copy number variation in the rat. Nature Genetics, 40:538-545.
Cuppen, E., Gort, E., Hazendonk, E., Mudde, J., v.d. Belt, J., Nijman, I.J., Guryev, V., and Plasterk, R.H.A. (2007). Efficient target-selected mutagenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans: towards a knockout for every gene. Genome Research, 17:649-658
Guryev, V., Smits, B.M.G., van de Belt, J., Verheul, M., Hubner, N., and Cuppen, E. (2006). Haplotype block structure is conserved across mammals. PLOS Genetics, 2(7): e121.
Smits, B.M.G., van Zutphen, B.F.M., Plasterk, R.H.A, and Cuppen, E. (2004) Genetic variation in coding regions between and within commonly used inbred rat strains. Genome Research, 14:1285-1290
Berezikov, E., Guryev, V., Belt, J. v.d., Wienholds, E., Plasterk, R.H.A, and Cuppen, E. (2005). Phylogenetic shadowing and computational identification of human microRNA genes. Cell, 120:21-24
More PubMed publications by Edwin CuppenInaugural lecture, 22 February 2008See below for link to the text of "Wat ziet er in min genen" (in Dutch)
Curriculum Vitae
Edwin Cuppen obtained his MSc in Molecular Sciences at Wageningen Agricultural University in 1994 (cum laude) and his PhD degree from the Radboud University in Nijmegen in 1999. He then performed postdoctoral research at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam and at the Hubrecht Institute in Utrecht, in the group of Prof. Ronald Plasterk. In 2002 he became a staff scientist at the Hubrecht Institute and in 2007 he was appointed as Professor of Genome Biology in the Biology Department, Utrecht University. In 2009 he became head of the research section of the Medical Genetics department, University Medical Center Utrecht. His work at the Hubrecht Institute led to a prestigious European Young Investigator Award in 2005.
Edwin Cuppen is cofounder of the biotech startup InteRNA Technologies that focuses on miRNA-based diagnostics and therapeutics.