Dear College of Science Faculty and Staff,
If you need to explain to someone, anyone, what DNA is, you can easily do that, saying it’s the code of life. And you can add that the code is made by arranging 4 units called A,G,C and T in various orders, to form long chains. It’s the order of the units that codes for life. If you want to add a bit more, you can say that DNA is what your genes are made of.
I’ve been watching Cold Case Files (Netflix), where perpetrators of unsolved crimes are brought to justice, often through DNA forensics, that became available only decades after the crime. DNA forensics uses DNA fingerprinting, and if you need to explain this, you can say that each person has some unique DNA code that can be used to identify the person, analogous to regular fingerprints from unique skin patterns on your fingertips. Not only have a myriad criminals been caught by DNA fingerprinting, or genetic genealogy, but hundreds of people wrongly convicted have been exonerated.
DNA forensics is one wonderful outcome of the Human Genome Project, a massive project that catalogued all the DNA code in a human, called the ‘genome’, some three billion A,G,C and T units! I remember attending a summer conference as a graduate student, right when the idea of determining the entire DNA code sequence of the human genome was being floated by leaders in the field. It was highly contentious, with heated arguments in lectures, over lunch, and late into the night. The issues were the enormous cost, the daunting logistics and uncertainty whether the information obtained would be useful. The Human Genome Project went ahead in 1990 and it took more than a decade to complete reliable human DNA sequence. It was rapidly clear that every penny was worth it, scientists were up to the challenge of assembling the three billion bits of code, and the knowledge acquired is an investment that keeps on giving. Hooray for Science!
It’s hard to overstate the importance of the Human Genome Project. From this, and huge subsequent research, the field of Genomics was born, that covers understanding everything about DNA code in people, and in every species of life. Genomics is not a ‘fill-in existing blanks’ field, that answers long-standing questions. Rather, Genomics opened brand new questions, brand new opportunities for discovery and application that could not have been dreamed of prior.
From Genomics and important spin-off fields such as Biotechnology, Bioinformatics, Bioengineering, Synthetic Biology, and Ecological Genomics, scientists learn how DNA code is used to govern the function of cells, how it is changed in disease states, how it can be used to devise new medicines and new materials, to correct faulty genes, to crucially understand how species are affected by habitat destruction and climate change, on and on. The possibilities are literally limitless. In the Northeastern University College of Science, every department is making groundbreaking contributions across the fields of Genomics. Many undergraduate majors, and our world-renowned MS Biotechnology and MS Bioinformatics programs are direct outcomes of the Genomics revolution. Thank you and congratulation for this work!
If, next week, you are getting incredibly well-deserved time off from teaching classes, running teaching labs or looking after students in other ways, I hope you have a lovely Spring Break. The Weekly will be back on March 15. Warmest wishes to everyone.