He was sent to the Ras el Ain concentration camp in Syria as part of the Armenian genocide, but escaped in 1918 and arrived in the U.S. in 1923.
[8] Kazazian returned to Baltimore, Maryland as a postdoctoral fellow, studying the genetics of fruit flies and X chromosome inactivation with Barton Childs at Johns Hopkins (1964–1966)[12][8][9] In 1966, he joined Harvey Itano at the National Institutes of Health,[11] working as a staff associate for the US Public Health Service.
[11] From 1988 to 1994, he and Maxine Singer at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) held joint quarterly lab meetings, sharing their knowledge of the biochemistry and genetics.
[11] In 1999, Kazazian and Arupa Ganguly joined the plaintiffs for Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc.,[2][16] after they were served with a cease-and-desist letter demanding that they stop breast cancer screenings for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes.
"[17][18][19] In July 2010, Kazazian returned to Johns Hopkins, holding the position of a Professor in the Institute of Genetic Medicine.
It does a "remarkable job" of discussing early contributors, the development of computational biology, and the field of mobile DNA and retrotransposable elements.
[12] Kazazian made important contributions to human genetics through his research into DNA haplotypes and the molecular basis of beta thalassemia and through his exploration of retrotransposons (jumping genes).
[9] Using information on β-globin DNA polymorphisms from Stylianos Antonarakis and others, Kazazian helped develop methods for prenatal diagnosis of sickle cell anemia.
Coining the term haplotypes for certain types of polymorphisms, Kazazian collaborated with Stuart Orkin to characterize the mutations causing beta-thalassemia.
[9] The Kazazian lab was the first to discover a jumping gene in humans, and to demonstrate that a transposable element caused disease in man via insertional mutagenesis.
[9] Kazazian found that retrotransposon mobility causes shuffling of exons and their flanking sequences, a discovery with important implications for the understanding of evolution.