King Abdullah University of Science and Technology

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Christian Froekjaer Jensen 

Assistant Professor, Bioscience

Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division


Laboratory of Synthetic Genome Biology

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Affiliations

Education Profile


  • Research Fellow, Stanford University, 2017
  • Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Utah, 2014
  • Ph.D., Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen, 2008
  • MSc, Neuroscience, University of Oregon, 2004
  • MSc, Biophysics, University of Copenhagen, 2002

Research Interests

Professor Froekjaer Jensen's lab studies genome organization and epigenetic gene regulation using C. elegans as a model system. Specifically, our research will focus on three main areas: 

(1) How can non-coding DNA structures prevent epigenetic silencing?
We aim to understand the genetic and mechanistic basis for how a class of non-coding DNA (named PATCs) prevents epigenetic silencing and their interaction with small RNA pathways.

(2) Which gene features enable expression from repressive chromatin?
We will use high-throughput methods to identify: (a) sequence features in enhancers and promoters that tune their expression to their chromatin environment, (b) genomic regions where gene silencing is developmentally regulated, and (c) gene structures (e.g. intron position and content) that regulate expression.

(3) Development of high-throughput genome editing technologies.
We are developing genome editing tools using transposons and Cas9/CRISPR. The long-term goal is to enable genome-scale manipulation for arbitrarily complex re-organization and re-coding of the C. elegans genome. These tools will allow us, and others, to use Synthetic Biology approaches to answer questions about genome structure and function.​

Selected Publications

  • Frøkjær-Jensen C, Jain N, Hansen L, Davis MW, Li Y, Zhao D, Rebora K, Millet JRM, Liu X, Kim SK, Dupuy D, Jorgensen EM, Fire AZ, 2016, An abundant class of non-coding DNA can prevent stochastic gene silencing in the C. elegans germline, Cell, 166:343–357
  • Frøkjær-Jensen C, M Wayne Davis, Mihail Sarov, Jon Taylor, Stephane Flibotte, Matthew LaBella, Andrei Pozniakovski, Donald G Moerman, Erik M Jorgensen, 2014, Random and targeted integration of transgenes in C. elegans using a modified Mos1 transposon, Nature Methods, 11:529-34.
  • Frøkjær-Jensen C, M Wayne Davis, Ailion M and Jorgensen EM, 2012, Improved Mos1-mediated transgenesis in C. elegans, Nature Methods, 9:117-8 
  • Frøkjær-Jensen C, Davis MW, Hollopeter G, Taylor J, Harris TW, Nix P, Lofgren R, Prestgard-Duke M, Bastiani M, Moerman DG, Jorgensen EM, 2010, Targeted gene deletions in C. elegans using transposon excision, Nature Methods, 7:451-3. 
  • Frøkjær-Jensen C, Davis MW, Hopkins CE, Newman BJ, Thummel JM, Olesen SP, Grunnet M, Jorgensen EM, 2008, Single-copy insertion of transgenes in Caenorhabditis elegans. Nature Genetics. 40:1375-83.