Frederick Alt

Who is Frederick Alt?

Frederick W. Alt is an American geneticist. He is a member of the Immunology section of the National Academy of Sciences and a Charles A. Janeway Professor of Pediatrics, and Professor of Genetics at Harvard Medical School. He is also President of the Immune Disease Institute and Directory of the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine of Children's Hospital Boston. He is a HHMI investigator since 1987.

He received a Ph.D. in Biology from Stanford University in 1977, under the research direction of Robert Schimke, followed by postdoctoral work in David Baltimore's laboratory at MIT. From 1982-91 he was on the faculty at Columbia University and then moved to Harvard Medical School.

His research interest is in maintenance of genome stability in cells of the mammalian immunological system, particularly antigen receptor variable region gene assembly in developing B and T lymphocytes, immunoglobulin heavy chain class switch recombination, and somatic hypermutation in activated mature B lymphocytes.