Botstein Will Speak At Institute For Advanced Study On "Genes And Genomes"

Geneticist David Botstein will give a lecture entitled “Of Genes and Genomes” on December 17 at 4:30 p.m. in Wolfensohn Hall on the campus of the Institute for Advanced Study.

Botstein is director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute of Integrative Genomics, and Evnin Professor of Genomics, at Princeton University.

Botstein graduated from Harvard University and received his Ph.D. in Human Genetics from the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Department of Biology in 1967, rising to become Griswold Professor of Genetics. In 1988 he left MIT to become Vice President for Science of Genentech, Inc., and in 1990 joined Stanford University’s School of Medicine as Ascherman Professor and Chair of the Department of Genetics. He has held his present position since July of this year.

Botstein’s research has centered on genetics, especially the use of genetic methods to understand biological functions. He has also contributed to understanding the regulation and evolution of temperature bacteriophages. Other scientific interests include protein secretion, and the use of localized random mutagenesis technologies to understand protein structure/function relationships. He began his theoretical contributions on linkage mapping of the human genome beginning in 1980.

Recent research activities include studies of yeast genetics, genomics, and cell biology, and the development of DNA micro-array technology and analysis methods, and their application to classifying and understanding human cancers.

Botstein is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine. He has received numerous awards, among them, the Genetics Society of America Medal and the Allen Award of the American Society of Human Genetics. He served on many policy-making and peer-review committees, most recently the NIH Program Advisory Panel on the Human Genome and the Advisory Council of the National Center for Human Genome Research.

Botstein’s lecture is sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Study’s Center for Systems Biology, which is led by Arnold Levine, visiting professor in the School of Natural Sciences. For more information, call 609-734-8118.