Ronald R. Breaker, Ph.D.

Ronald R. Breaker, Ph.D., associate professor of molecular, cellular and developmental biology, has been named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and the Henry Ford II Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. Breaker’s lab explores the “RNA world,” the idea that the Earth’s first life forms were composed of RNA rather than DNA. His studies have led him to discover dozens of regulatory structures, known as riboswitches, which might be used to control the activity of genes inserted into cells during the course of gene therapy.