Somatic mutations occur over the course of the lifetime, and as a gastroenterologist, Yousef investigates how these changes influence benign gastrointestinal diseases. With his BroadIgnite funding, he plans to leverage clinical samples from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and the MGB Biobank to investigate somatic mutations in three different inflammatory gastrointestinal diseases—microscopic colitis, eosinophilic esophagitis, and a colitis caused by cancer immunotherapies—to decipher how they impact these conditions.