The Irish public has a wonderful opportunity to get the inside story on how scientists succeeded in completing the first drafts of the human genome - our entire genetic make-up, complete with instructions for life.
A seminar will be staged on Friday next, July 7th, in Trinity College Dublin which will be addressed by Dr John Sulston, who had a pivotal role in the research. TCD is awarding him an honorary doctorate later that day.
Dr Sulston has been one of the most effective advocates as well as being one of the most innovative scientific leaders of the Human Genome Project (HGP), according to Prof David McConnell of TCD Department of Genetics. Much of the human genome was sequenced at the Sanger Centre in Cambridge under his direction.
The Welcome Trust has played a key funding and organisational role in ensuring this part of the project was carried out in the public domain. Dr Michael Morgan, a biochemist and TCD graduate (from 1965), is the officer of the trust who has been responsible for the relationship between it and the ground-breaking research team headed by Dr Sulston. He will also give a presentation at the seminar.
He has acted as "a dynamo from within the trust" and was responsible for research funding in excess of £200 million towards the HGP which enabled a third of the genome to be sequenced. Together with Dr Francis Collins of the National Institutes of Health in the US, they co-ordinated the international effort.
The seminar, with admission free of charge, will be of interest to a general audience and will include an extended discussion after the formal presentations. It has been organised by the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, the RDS and The Irish Times. It takes place at Joly Lecture Theatre, Hamilton Building, in Trinity College on Friday from 10 a.m. to noon (Enter at the Lincoln Place gate).