Sebastien Weyn, PhD

“I think I’ve had a lot of opportunities growing up to work with some great people.That’s something I really want to pass on.”

Sebastien Weyn is a Senior Bioinformatics Scientist at Stoke Therapeutics. Weyn analyzes data on the various genetic sequences that can ultimately create the same protein — with an eye on building drugs that can target these proteins.

For his dissertation project, Weyn dissected the regulatory mechanisms underlying dynamic alternative splicing switches during neurodevelopment. His work led to insights into the role that Rbfox proteins have in promoting mature splicing patterns, including in a number of autism candidate risk genes. The Rbfox family of proteins are important regulators of alternative splicing and mutations of these genes have been linked to several neurodevelopmental disorders.

Weyn also developed a comprehensive reference catalogue of alternative splicing events after investigating how multiple RNA-binding proteins work together to control dynamic splicing switches with precise timing. For the latter, Weyn worked closely with lab members on deep RNA sequencing data of mouse brain at different developmental stages; this work contributed to an expanded list of alternative splicing events.

Weyn earned his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Texas, Austin, and his PhD in Systems Biology from Columbia University.