Scientist to detail how genome, computer have changed biology

Scientist to detail how genome, computer have changed biologyNovember 16, 2006Cynthia J. Moritzcjmoritz@syr.edu

David Botstein, Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics and director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at Princeton University, will speak Monday, Nov. 20, at 7 p.m. in Grant Auditorium on “How the Genome and the Computer Have Changed Biological Science.”

His lecture is part of the Jack and Pat Bryan Life Sciences Lecture Series, presented by the Graduate Student Organization and the Biology Graduate Student Organization. The lecture will be followed by refreshments. It is free and open to the University community.

Botstein was educated at Harvard University (A.B. 1963) and the University of Michigan (Ph.D. 1967). He has served on the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University’s School of Medicine in addition to Princeton. He also served as the vice president for science at Genentech Inc.

Botstein was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1981 and to the Institute of Medicine in 1993. He has served on many policy-making and peer-review committees, including the NAS/NRC study on the Human Genome Project (1987-88), the NIH Program Advisory Panel on the Human Genome (1989-90) and the Advisory Council of the National Center for Human Genome Research (1990-95).

His research has centered on genetics, especially the use of genetic methods to understand biological functions. In the early 1970s, Botstein turned to budding yeast, devising novel genetic methods to study the functions of the actin and tubulin cytoskeletons. In 1980, he began his theoretical contributions on linkage mapping of the human genome by suggesting, with collaborators, that restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) could be used to produce a linkage map of the human genome and to map the genes that cause disease in humans. Linkage mapping of human disease genes became one of the foundations of genomics.

At Princeton, Botstein is leading a team of faculty who are teaching a new experimental introductory science curriculum, where the basic ideas of physics, chemistry, computer science and biology, along with the relevant mathematics, are taught together. Students who take this curriculum in their first two years of college can then major in any of the component disciplines, or chose to earn a certificate in quantitative biology by continuing on to a third-year junior project lab.

Botstein has published nearly 400 peer-reviewed papers and numerous monographs. His current research interests center around the study of yeast biology at the system level.