We use experiments and computational analysis to understand the principles and evolution of genetic systems.  Our recent work has focussed on understanding and globally predicting how mutations map to phenotypic changes, how mutations combine to cause disease, the evolution and importance of genetic redundancy, the evolution of regulatory networks and tissue-specific biology, and the interplay between noise, plasticity and evolutionary potential.

Research articles

Lehner B. Genes Confer Similar Robustness to Environmental, Stochastic, and Genetic Perturbations in Yeast. PLoS One. 5(2): e9035.

Dzyubachyk O, Jelier R, Lehner B, Niessen W, Meijering E. Model-based approach for tracking embryogenesis in Caenorhabditis elegans fluorescence microscopy data.  Conf Proc IEEE Eng Med Biol Soc. 2009;1:5356-9.

Vavouri T, Semple JI, Garcia-Verdugo R, & Lehner B. Intrinsic protein disorder and interaction promiscuity are widely associated with dosage sensitivity. Cell.  2009. 138:198–208.

Bossi A, Lehner B. Tissue specificity and the human protein interaction network. Molecular Systems Biology. 2009. 5:260.

Vavouri T, Semple J, Lehner B. Widespread conservation of genetic redundancy during a billion years of eukaryotic evolution. Trends in Genetics. 2008.  24(10):485-8.

Tischler JT, Lehner B, Fraser AG. Evolutionary plasticity of genetic interaction networks. Nature Genetics. 2008. Apr;40(4):390-1.

Lehner B. Selection to minimise noise in living systems and its implications for the evolution of gene expression. Molecular Systems Biology. 2008. 4:170.

Semple JI*, Vavouri T*, Lehner B. A simple principle concerning the robustness of protein complex activity to changes in gene expression. BMC Systems Biology. 2008. 2:1.

Lee I*, Lehner B*, Crombie C, Wong W, Fraser AG, Marcotte E. A single network comprising the majority of genes accurately predicts the phenotypic effects of gene perturbation in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature Genetics. 2008. Feb;40(2):181-8.

Vavouri T, Walter K, Gilks WR, Lehner B*, Elgar E*. Parallel evolution of conserved noncoding elements that target a common set of developmental regulatory genes from worms to humans. Genome Biology. 2007 Feb 2;8(2):R15.

Lehner B, Crombie C, Tischler J, Fortunato A, Fraser AG. Systematic mapping of genetic interactions in Caenorhabditis elegans identifies common modifiers of diverse signaling pathways. Nature Genetics. 2006 Aug;38(8):896-903.

Lehner B, Tischler J, Fraser AG. RNAi screens in C. elegans in a 96-well liquid format and their application to the systematic identification of genetic interactions. Nature Protocols. 2006 1(3):1617-1620.

Tischler J, Lehner B, Chen N, Fraser AG. Combinatorial RNA interference in C. elegans reveals that redundancy between gene duplicates can be maintained for more than 80 million years of evolution. Genome Biology. 2006 Aug 2;7(8):R69.

Lehner B, Calixto A, Crombie C, Tischler J, Fortunato A, Chalfie M, Fraser AG. Loss of LIN-35, the Caenorhabditis elegans ortholog of the tumor suppressor p105Rb, results in enhanced RNA interference. Genome Biology. 2006;7(1):R4

Lehner B and Fraser AG. A first-draft human protein-interaction map. Genome Biology. 2004;5(9):R63. Epub 2004 Aug 13.

Lehner B and Fraser AG. Protein domains enriched in mammalian tissue-specific or widely expressed genes. Trends in Genetics. 2004 Oct;20(10):468-72.

Lehner B and Sanderson CM. A protein interaction framework for human mRNA degradation. Genome Research. 2004 Jul;14(7):1315-23.

Lehner B, Semple JI, Brown SE, Counsell D, Campbell RD and Sanderson CM.  Analysis of a high throughput yeast two-hybrid system and its use to predict the function of intracellular proteins encoded within the human MHC class III region. Genomics 2004 Jan;83(1):153-67.

Estevez AM, Lehner B, Sanderson CM, Ruppert T and Clayton C. The roles of inter-subunit interactions in exosome stability. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 2003 Sep 12;278(37):34943-51.

Lehner B, Williams G, Campbell RD and Sanderson CM. Antisense transcripts in the human genome. Trends in Genetics. 2002 Feb;18(2):63-5. 

Recent reviews

Vavouri T, Lehner B. Conserved noncoding elements and the evolution of animal body plans. Bioessays. 2009. Jul;31(7):727-35.

Lehner B, Lee I. Network-guided genetic screening: building, testing and using gene networks to predict gene function. Briefings in Functional Genomics and Proteomics. 2008 Apr 29.

Lehner B. Modelling genotype-phenotype relationships and human disease with genetic interaction networks. J Exp Biol 2007. 210(Pt 9):1559-66.

PDFs of some of these publications are available here.