Benjamin Schuster-Böckler is an Associate Professor and Assistant Member of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, based in the Nuffield Department of Medicine.
The main focus of his group is to understand the causes and consequences of mutation rate heterogeneity. In previous work, Benjamin established that epigenetic marks in the form of histone modifications have a profound influence on the mutational landscape in cancer cells.
More recently, the Schuster-Böckler Lab has analysed the influence of different DNA modifications on mutability, and described how DNA replication changes the distribution of mutations in cancer genomes. This has important implications for the understanding of cancer development. For example, it allows the identification of new carcinogenic mechanisms that might be preventable. The Schuster-Böckler lab is also interested in developing novel genomic methods in the area of single-cell and cell-free technology. For example, as part of ongoing collaboration, they have created tools to assess the robustness of single-cell transcriptome measurements, and built tools to process epigenetic sequencing data using a brand-new, Oxford-developed technology called TAPS.
