Niles Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Niles Lab emphasizes the development and use of functional and chemical genetics approaches for discovering and validating novel antimalarial drug targets. We achieve this using a combination of genome editing (CRISPR/Cas) and conditional knockdown (TetR-DOZI aptamer system) tools to systematically perturb gene expression and determine target vulnerability/ essentiality. Using conditional knockdown lines, we are able to systematically identify functionally important interactions between prioritized targets and novel compounds.

Laboratory Contributions

• Functional genetics
• Conditional knockdown
• Genome editing
• Chemical genetic screens