by Elizabeth Pennisi
In 2 weeks, human geneticist Eric Green will take the reins of the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the arm of the National Institutes of Health that spearheaded the sequencing of the human genome and leads the U.S. genomics effort. In doing so, this M.D./Ph.D. steps into shoes vacated by now NIH Director Francis Collins in August 2008 after 15 years.
An energizer bunny among scientists, Green will have to turn his energy and enthusiasm toward dealing both with the post stimulus-money funding decline and with the ever more pressing need to turn sequencing information into relevant biological and biomedical information. Continued advances in DNA sequencing technology will make sequencing a routine biological assay. “The biggest challenges are to figure out how to ensure biological insights and functional studies keep pace with an ever accelerating pace in our ability to generate sequence,” says Claire Fraser-Liggett from the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. “Green is a very forward-looking thinker and has the ability to begin to strategize about what all of this new technology will allow us to do.”
Green started his career at NIH in 1994, focusing at first on the physical mapping of chromosomes. He and his lab were part of the planning and sequencing of the human genome—in particular chromosome 7—from start to finish. Early on his group spearheaded comparative studies by sequencing the equivalent regions to human chromosome 7 in other mammals. In 2002, he took over the institute's intramural program and as the institute's scientific director founded the NIH Intramural Sequencing Center, a social and behavioral research branch, and programs on genomics and global health as well as on undiagnosed diseases.
Green says one of his first priorities is to finish a longterm plan that’s been in the works for institute, with four white papers now out for public comment. And Eric Boerwinkle, a human geneticist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston is confident Green will set the good course for the $500 million institute: “He will be able to strike the right balance between basic science and applied translational research.”
Photo Credit: Maggie Bartlett, NHGRI
thank you