Computational & Systems Biology Program

The Thomas Norman Lab

Thomas Norman, PhD

Specific combinations of genes exhibit emergent properties when expressed together, enabling the generation of diverse cell types and behaviors. This phenomenon motivates the quantitative study of genetic interactions (GIs), which compare the phenotypic consequences of perturbing two or more genes alone or in combination. The challenge of studying GIs is their sheer scale: e.g., among 10,000 genes there are ~50 million possible pairwise GIs. The Norman Lab blends computational approaches with high-throughput experimental methods to develop new screening approaches for finding and characterizing genetic interactions.

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Publications

Norman, T.M.*, Horlbeck, M.*, Replogle, J., Ge, A., Xu, A., Jost, M., Gilbert, L., & Weissman, J.S. Exploring genetic interaction manifolds constructed from rich phenotypes. Science 365, 786-793 (2019).

Adamson, B.*, Norman, T.M.*, Jost, M., Cho, M.Y., Nuñez, J.K., Chen, Y., Villalta, J.E., Gilbert, L.A., Horlbeck, M.A., Hein, M.Y. Pak, R.A., Gray, A.N., Gross, C.A., Dixit, A. Parnas, O., Regev, A. & Weissman, J.S. A multiplexed single-cell CRISPR screening platform enables systematic dissection of the unfolded protein response. Cell 167, 1867-1882 (2016).

Hilfinger, A.*, Norman, T.*, Vinnicombe, G. & Paulsson, J. Constraints on fluctuations in sparsely characterized biological systems. Physical Review Letters 116, 058101 (2016).

Norman, T.*, Lord, N.*, Paulsson, J. & Losick, R. Memory and modularity in cell-fate decision making. Nature 503, 481–486 (2013).

Lord, N.D.*, Norman, T.M.*, Yuan, R., Losick, R., & Paulsson, J. Stochastic antagonism between two proteins governs a bacterial cell fate switch. Science 366, 116-120 (2019).

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People

Thomas Norman, PhD

Systems biologist Thomas Norman develops new computational and functional genomics approaches for studying how genes interact to realize complex phenotypes.
PhD, Harvard University

Members

Ashleigh Donnellan
Administrative Assistant, Sr.

Lab Alumni

Rafaela Mendes

Laboratory Technician

Lab Affiliations

Achievements

Josie Robertson Investigator (2019-2024)
Damon Runyon-Dale F. Frey Award for Breakthrough Scientists (2019)
Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation Fellowship (2015-2018)
NIH Director's New Innovator Award (2020)

Disclosures

Doctors and faculty members often work with pharmaceutical, device, biotechnology, and life sciences companies, and other organizations outside of MSK, to find safe and effective cancer treatments, to improve patient care, and to educate the health care community.

MSK requires doctors and faculty members to report (“disclose”) the relationships and financial interests they have with external entities. As a commitment to transparency with our community, we make that information available to the public.

Thomas Norman discloses the following relationships and financial interests:

No disclosures meeting criteria for time period

The information published here is for a specific annual disclosure period. There may be differences between information on this and other public sites as a result of different reporting periods and/or the various ways relationships and financial interests are categorized by organizations that publish such data.

This page and data include information for a specific MSK annual disclosure period (January 1, 2022 through disclosure submission in spring 2023). This data reflects interests that may or may not still exist. This data is updated annually.

Learn more about MSK’s COI policies here. For questions regarding MSK’s COI-related policies and procedures, email MSK’s Compliance Office at [email protected].

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