On Thursday afternoon, the Science in Medicine Lecture Series, hosted by the UW School of Medicine, concluded with its Annual Lecture, honoring George Church, Ph.D., a Harvard professor of genetics, for both the broad range and depth of his cross-disciplinary research.
Each year a nationally recognized scientist whose research has had a powerful impact on their field of study is selected by the Council on Research and Graduate Education (CORGE). Church’s early work contributed to the first genome ever directly sequenced, a building block for genomic science.
Each lecture in the Science in Medicine series is meant to share current research with the UW scientific community according to Heather Hawley, outreach specialist and organizer of the event.
Church shared his more recent work in genetics and synthetic biology, an emerging field that’s a mix of every branch of biology and engineering, during the Annual Lecture, titled “Radical Reprogramming of Organs, Organisms, and Ecosystems.”
“[The lecture is] basically exploring the possibilities of synthetic biology,” Church said. “Fighting viruses, healing viruses, making synthetic organs for ultimately transplant or for testing drugs. And then finally, ecosystems … and the new type of gene drive.”
Church discussed modifying the genes of bacteria to prevent viruses from replicating, personalized medicine, and CRISPR, a method for cutting specific genetic segment from the genome, which can then be replaced through other means with new genes.
One application of CRISPR is gene drive. After CRISPR excises a mosquito gene, a malaria-resistant gene could be inserted into a population of mosquitoes. When the mosquito with the resistant gene reproduces, it not only passes on the resistant gene, but also alters the gene given to the offspring by the other parent. The offspring is then only able to pass on the resistant gene. After a few generations, the majority of the mosquito population would be resistant and unable to spread malaria to humans.
In the past, the Annual Lecture was attended primarily by School of Medicine faculty and students. This year’s lecture was larger than ever, with more than 600 UW faculty and students from a variety of departments present. Every chair was filled and people not only sat on the floor, but also stood outside the auditorium to listen.
The popularity of this year’s lecture was due to Church’s presence, Hawley said.
“He has hands in so many different fields,” Hawley said. “… We’ve gotten a lot of interest from other departments.”
Specifically, there was interest from computer science and engineering, and the cross-disciplinary Genetically Engineered Materials Science and Engineering Center (GEMSEC), which combines biology and material sciences.
“[Cross-disciplinary research] is absolutely necessary,” director of GEMSEC Dr. Mehmet Sarikaya said. “We used to call this interdisciplinary. In other words, scientists from different disciplines coming together. Biologists, genome scientists, material scientists, electrical engineers coming together and working together to solve these enormous problems.”
UW senior fellow Marc Lajoie, a former graduate student of Church’s, said he tries to live by Church’s advice to chose important research over easy research and to never say something is impossible.
“Those two things define his approach to science and developing technologies that solve problems,” Lajoie said.
Earlier this week, 14 graduate students from a variety of departments ranging from genetics to computer science and engineering, had the chance to eat lunch with Church, Hawley said.
“Church planted that seed and look what’s grown from it,” Hawley said. “Now you have all these branches of science that his work has touched.”
Reach contributing writer Emma Bueren at development@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @EmBueren
