Departments
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Week of 17 October 1997 |
Vol. I, No. 8 |
Feature
Article
University Lecture
Cantor on unlocking the human genetic code
by Jim Graves
"The Human Genome Project to unlock the human genetic code is progressing faster than its most ardent supporters imagined possible." That is the good news Charles Cantor, the director of BU's Center for Advanced Biotechnology and a pioneer in molecular genetics, will discuss when he delivers the annual University Lecture at the Tsai Performance Center at 7:30 p.m., Monday, October 20.
The not-so-good news, he says, is that "there will still be a long gap -- perhaps 10 to 20 years -- between the completion of the genetic decoding and the improve-ments in medicine that will inevi-tably follow. My lecture will summarize the status of the project and explain why it's not so easy to translate the results into immediately tangible benefits." Cantor, who also serves as chairman of the ENG biomedical engineering department and professor of pharmacology at BUSM, will address the topic "Implications of the Human Genome Project."
The international effort to analyze the structure of human DNA and determine the location of the estimated 100,000 human genes also calls for analyzing the DNA of several lower types of organisms to provide comparative data for understanding the functioning of the human genome. When the task of sequencing some three billion DNA base pairs is completed, the data amassed would, if printed, fill some 200 books the size of the New York City telephone directory.
These data are expected to serve as a source book for biomedical science in the 21st century and to provide understanding of, and eventual treatments for, many of the more than 4,000 genetic diseases as well as for diseases in which genetics plays a part alongside other factors. With the emergence of DNA diagnostics, the emphasis of medicine will shift from treatment to prevention. And technologies, databases, and biological resources developed in genome research will make heavy impacts on agriculture, energy production, waste control, and environmental cleanup. Sales of biotechnology products are expected to reach $20 billion by the year 2000.
Charles Cantor earned an under- graduate degree from Columbia in 1963 and a doctorate from the University of California at Berkeley in 1966. That year he joined the faculty at Columbia, where he held a chaired professorship and served as chairman of the medical school's department of genetics and development. In 1989 he became the first director of the Human Genome Center at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and a professor of molecular biology at the University of California at Berkeley. He joined BU in 1992.
Cantor's research focuses on identifying biological problems that resist conventional analytical approaches and on developing methodologies or techniques for solving them. Cantor and his colleague, Professor of Biomedical Engineering Cassandra Smith, the Center's deputy director, laid the groundwork for the Human Genome Project in 1983 with a revolutionary breakthrough in genetic and molecular biological studies enabling the development of chromosome-sized DNA molecules. Cantor's laboratory has also developed methods for studying structural relationships in complex assemblies of proteins and nucleic acids and for sensitive detection of proteins and nucleic acids. His present interests include human genes associated with sight and taste and the development of new methods for faster DNA sequencing.
He is an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry in 1978 and an Outstanding Investigator Grant from the National Cancer Institute in 1985. In 1988 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He served on the founding council and the executive committee of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO), was president of HUGO Americas, and from 1988 to 1992 served as chairman of the U.S. Department of Energy's Human Genome Coordinating Committee.
The October 20 lecture is free and open to the public.