Bjarne Bartlett

Research Overview
My research investigates the genomic architecture and evolutionary mechanisms of conotoxins—small, highly structured peptide toxins derived from predatory marine cone snails (Conus). By examining how these bioactive peptides are shaped by transposable elements and genomic recombination, our work aims to identify novel therapeutic leads that target cellular pathways hijacked in cancer biology.
A major focus of our laboratory is refining computational toxin prediction. We develop multi-tiered bioinformatic filtering strategies that integrate genomic sequence data with functional transcriptomic filters to accurately resolve cysteine frameworks, eliminate reading-frame artifacts, and distinguish viable toxin genes from pseudogenes.