Expert for Media Profile
Basic Science
Robert H. Singer, Ph.D.
- Professor, Department of Cell Biology
- Professor, Dominick P. Purpura Department of Neuroscience
- Harold and Muriel Block Chair in Anatomy & Structural Biology
Areas of Expertise
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Dr. Singer is a leader in the field of biophotonics, which enables scientists to observe activities within living cells at the molecular level, and in the study of mRNA, a molecule that controls the expression and positioning of proteins within cells. Dr. Singer, who was called a “pioneer” by Science magazine, leads a robust lab that focuses on how RNA is expressed by the genome and how it travels from the site of its birth to its ultimate location in the cell where it makes proteins.
Dr. Singer made his mark with the development of fluorescent in-situ hybridization (FISH), a widely used research tool for studying the activity of genes and their messages at the tissue level. More recently, he has improved the technique so that scientists, for the first time, can observe single molecules, such as mRNA, in single cells in real time, providing new understandings of how cells live and die.