The Nobel laureate responsible for sequencing a full third of the human genome comes to Dublin next month to deliver a free public lecture on the genome's social importance.
Prof Sir John Sulston, right, will speak at the Helix in a lecture entitled "The Common Thread: Society And The Human Genome".
Sulston is rightly praised as a key figure in the race to discover the entire human genetic blueprint. His insistence that each element of the genome be published free and in full ensured that scientists around the world would be able to share in these important discoveries.
He won his Nobel Prize, which is in physiology and medicine, in 2002 for ground-breaking research on a microscopic worm; he shared it with H. Robert Horvitz and Sydney Brenner. Working at the Medical Research Council laboratories in Cambridge, he and colleagues mapped out the growth and development of Caenorhabditis elegans, in the process pointing the way towards the unravelling of the human genetic blueprint.
His success with C elegans encouraged the Wellcome Trust to invest 40 million in the Sanger Centre, near Cambridge, with Sulston as director. Linked with a similar research group in the US, the centre sequenced block after block of the human genome, drawing on work contributed from around the world, including Ireland.
A fellow of the Royal Society and a knight since 2001, Sulston is a seminal figure in the history of human genetics. The public will be able to meet the man behind the scientist at the lecture on February 12th, organised by the Irish Council for Bioethics and The Irish Times.
The council was established in 2002 as an independent autonomous body to consider the ethical issues raised by recent developments in science and medicine. It interprets ethical questions raised by the new technologies and promotes public understanding, informed discussion and education.
Sulston will talk about how the genome project came to pass and about his determination that the genome would be made freely available to all, thus preventing it from being hidden behind a wall of patents. Such an outcome would have denied access to this fundamental information to all but those able to pay hefty fees, setting up barriers to communication, says Sulston.
"It is just one example of our culture of excessive patenting and privatisation, even in the case of fundamental discoveries that clearly belong to nobody - the enclosure of our intellectual commons," he says. "This culture impedes research and innovation, throttles ethical decision-making, widens the gap between rich and poor and contributes to global insecurity."
The lecture is at 7 p.m. on Thursday, February 12th, at the Helix, on Dublin City University's campus in Glasnevin. Only 400 places are available. For a free ticket, please telephone 1550-114708 or, from Northern Ireland, 0906-6040248 and leave your name, address and telephone number. Tickets are limited to two per person. The telephone lines will remain open until the 400 places at the lecture are fully booked. Calls cost 74 cent a minute. Calls from mobile telephones may be more expensive
