Deciphering the Genomic Rosetta Stone

Sequencing the genomic material of living organisms can be likened to using telescopes to peer into the universe’s past. By studying genetics, we can glean information about the evolutionary history of life on Earth. In this Presidential Lecture, Rob Phillips will present examples of such research, from how frogs arrived on oceanic islands in the Gulf of Guinea to the emergence of toothless whales tens of millions of years ago.

Currently, the NIH Databases report roughly 100 quadrillion nucleotides of genomic information. But despite the great successes of genomic science, we still know very little about gene regulation, even in well-studied species. Phillips will describe a strategy to overcome this regulatory ignorance. Specifically, he will show how, using a combination of tools from modern molecular biology, we can go from complete regulatory ignorance of a gene of interest to actionable knowledge of how that gene is turned on and off. But then what? The second part of his talk will focus on how, by using the tools of physics, we can predict the input-output properties of these newly discovered regulatory architectures. Such predictions provide a sense of how all living organisms deploy different genes in space and time to respond to the world around them. They offer a strategy for rewiring cells for bioengineering.