Benjamin Blencowe is Professor of RNA Biology and Genomics at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience at King's College London.

His research focuses on fundamental, RNA-directed mechanisms underlying the regulation of gene expression and how these mechanisms are disrupted in human diseases and disorders. He is particularly interested in understanding how the process of alternative splicing is regulated and integrated with other layers of gene expression to both control – and achieve complexity in – nervous system development and function.

Part of Benjamin's research programme encompasses the development and application of technologies enabling the high-throughput discovery and characterisation of RNA regulatory networks. A specific focus of his collaborative research at King’s is to discover and utilise splicing and additional RNA signatures in the development of therapeutic strategies capable of selectively rescuing normal functioning to neurons that are pathogenically-altered in autism and other brain disorders. 

Please see his Research Staff Profile for more detail.

Find out more about my research

• The Blencowe Lab

Key Publications

• Barbosa-Morais et al., 2012. The evolutionary landscape of alternative splicing in vertebrate species. Science. 
• Irimia et al., 2014. A highly conserved program of neuronal microexons is misregulated in autistic brains. Cell.
• Gueroussov etl., 2017. Regulatory expansion in mammals of multivalent hnRNP assemblies that globally control alternative splicing. Cell.
• Gonatopoulos-Pournatzis etl., 2020. Autism-misregulated eIF4G microexons control synaptic translation and higher-order cognitive functions. Mol. Cell.
• Li et al., 2024. Efficient, specific, and combinatorial control of endogenous exon splicing with dCasRx-RBM25. Mol. Cell. 

View all publications

Key Collaborators

• Professor Jernej Ule, King’s College London and Crick Institute
• Professor Sabine Cordes, Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum Research Institute-Mount Sinai Hospital, and University of Toronto
• Professor Mikko Taipale, Donnelly Centre, University of Toronto
• Professor Laura Andreae, King’s College London