Genetic Perturbation Platform

To fulfill this mission, GPP collaborates with researchers throughout the Broad community and beyond to apply functional genomics to biological discovery. This includes Broad flagship projects, such as the Dependency Map, and investigator-driven projects. Through these interactions, we gain critical insight into the strengths and limitations of existing approaches to functional genomics technologies, informing the further development of experimental tools.

The GPP R&D team works to develop and expand functional genomics technologies—such as CRISPR—to alter gene expression, produce sequence variants, or perturb gene regulation. This work is largely enabled by the Functional Genomics Consortium, a collaborative effort with world-leading life sciences organizations. Knowledge and materials generated through this effort are shared throughout the entire scientific community through publications, reagents available through distributors such as Addgene, and our web portal.

Additionally, our team of software engineers designs and maintains many critical tools that support scientists worldwide, such as the CRISPick design portal for designing CRISPR reagents.

GPP is one of the Broad’s first platforms, originally known as the RNAi Platform. We are a group of approximately 35 professional scientists who work as part of one or more teams involved in research and development, production activities, software engineering, and screening execution.