08:30 Tuesday July 8

Leif Andersson received his Ph.D. 1984 from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences.

He has been associated with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences since then and is now Professor in Animal Genetics. The work in his group focuses on unravelling the molecular basis for phenotypic diversity in domestic animals, from coat colour to metabolic traits. The group has generated several highly informative intercrosses in pigs and chicken. A particular interest has been to make crosses between the wild ancestors (wild boar and red junglefowl, respectively) and domestic breeds in order to study the genetic basis for phenotypic changes that has occurred due to domestication and selective breeding.

Major contributions from the group include molecular dissection of coat colour variation in the pig, mapping and characterisation of major Qunatitative Trait Loci (QTLs) affecting fatness and muscle development in the pig and positional cloning of PRKAG3 encoding a new isoform of the -chain of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) controlling variation in glycogen content in pig skeletal muscle.

17:30 Tuesday July 8

David Botstein, Professor of Genomics at Princeton University, has made
numerous fundamental contributions to modern genetics. Throughout his career he has been a powerhouse of innovation, and his concepts and strategies have repeatedly opened new avenues for modern genetic research. His contributions cover much of the field of genetics, from the development of methods of mutagenesis of bacteria and yeast, to the analysis of the problems of bacteriophage assembly and of eukaryotic cell biology (such as the cytoskeleton and secretion), to the development of the basic principles of the application of genetic polymorphisms for the mapping of the human genome. Most recently his strategy to use DNA-arrays to characterize normal cellular processes and disease-associated changes in these processes has paved the way towards genome-wide diagnostics. David Botstein is the winner of the Peter Gruber Foundation Genetics Prize for 2003. This Prize will be presented at the Congress on Thursday July 10.

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08:30 Monday July 7

Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D., is the Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute at the National Institutes of Health. He oversees the Human Genome Project, a complex multidisciplinary scientific enterprise directed at mapping and sequencing all of the human DNA, and determining aspects of its function. A working draft of the human genome sequence was announced in June of 2000, an initial analysis was published in February of 2001, and the completed sequence is anticipated in the spring of 2003. From the outset, the project has run ahead of schedule and under budget, and all data has been made immediately available to the scientific community, without restrictions on access or use.

He received a B.S. from the University of Virginia, a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Yale, and an M.D. from the University of North Carolina. Following a fellowship in Human Genetics at Yale, he joined the faculty at the University of Michigan, where he remained until moving to NIH in 1993. His research led to the identification of genes responsible for cystic fibrosis, neurofibromatosis, and Huntington's disease. He is a member of the Institute of Medicine and the National Academy of Sciences.

17:00 Thursday July 10

Jenny Graves received degrees from Adelaide University in 1964 and 1967, then a PhD in Molecular Genetics at the University of California at Berkeley in 1971. She returned to Australia in 1971 to a lecturer position at La Trobe University, where she remained until 2001, becoming Professor in 1992. She is now Professor and Head of the Comparative Genomics Research Group in the Research School of Biological Science at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Jenny uses evolutionary variation between distantly related mammals (humans, mice and Australian mammals such as kangaroos and platypus) to deduce how gene arrangment, function, and large-scale control evolved and how it works. Her work has delivered many surprises about how sex is determined in all mammals, and how sex chromosomes and the genes on them evolved.

Jenny has been President of GSA, co-Chair of the Comparative Genetics Committee of the International Human Gene Mapping Workshops, and Foundation President of the Cell Biology Society of Australia and New Zealand. She was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences in 1999.

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16:30 Monday July 7

Dr. Yoshihide Hayashizaki was awarded M.D. and Ph.D. from Osaka University Medical School in 1982 and 1986 respectively and the research work regarding human thyroid stimulating hormone subunit gene was continued until 1990.

He worked in National Cardiovascular Center Research Institute from 1990 to 1992 and achieved the development of the new technology, restriction landmark genome scanning (RLGS) system. From 1992, he started working in The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN), and in 1995, he was appointed as Project Director to start Mouse Encyclopedia Project in Genome Science Laboratory, RIKEN Tsukuba Life Science Center, which was transferred to Yokohama Campus.

Also he started activities for professorship in Basic Medical Sciences, University of Tsukuba from 1995 and in Graduate School of Integrated Sciences, Yokohama City University from 2001. Tokyo Techno-forum Gold Medal Prize and Tsukuba Prize were awarded in 1995 and 2001 respectively. His research interest is in application of Mouse Encyclopedia for analysis of gene transcriptional network.

16:30 Friday July 11

Dr. H. Robert Horvitz received S.B. degrees in Mathematics and in Economics from MIT in 1968 and a Ph.D. in Biology from Harvard University in 1974. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England from 1974-1977 and joined the MIT Department of Biology as a faculty member in 1978. Dr. Horvitz became an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in 1988 and of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research in 2001. Dr. Horvitz has served on many editorial boards, visiting committees and advisory committees. Dr. Horvitz was President of the Genetics Society of America in 1995. Dr. Horvitz was elected to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1991, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology in 1997.

Dr. Horvitz has received numerous awards for his accomplishments, including the Charles A. Dana Award for Pioneering Achievements in Health (1995); the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize (1998);the Gairdner Foundation International Award (Toronto, Canada, 1999); the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Neuroscience, 2001; and the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2002.

Sponsored By:

08:30 Wednesday July 9

Maria Jasin was a graduate student with Paul Schimmel at the Massachusetts Intitute of Technology and received her PhD in 1984.

She pursued post doctoral studies at the University of Zurich with Walter Schaffner and at Stanford University in the Biochemistry Department with Paul Berg. Dr. Jasin has been at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center since 1990 where she is a full member and holds the William E. Snee Chair.

She also has an appointment at the Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences. The research in her laboratory focuses on understanding how genomic integrity is maintained in mammalian cells, in particular how cells repair DNA double strand breaks. These studies encompass DNA break repair during meiosis in the formation of gametes, as well as a major interest in understading how aberrant break repair can lead to genomic rearrangements and promote tumorigenesis.

08:30 Friday July 11

Michael Lynch, Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA

Michael Lynch obtained his Ph. D. in ecology from the University of Minnesota in 1977. After working in the fields of population and community ecology for a few years, his research moved into the area of evolutionary and quantitative genetics, and from there his interests have expanded to include a focus on the mechanisms responsible for the evolution of eukaryotic genome complexity. Ongoing work also concerns the role of mutation in evolution and extinction, with various applications in genetic conservation. Attempts to address these issues involve the integration of empirical work with two model organisms (the nematode Caenorhabditis and the microcrustacean Daphnia), computational analyses of whole-genome sequences, and mathematical applications of population-genetic theory. Lynch is coauthor (with Bruce Walsh) of Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits; past president of the Society for the Study of Evolution; a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science; and the member of various NSF, NIH, and NRC panels.

Lynch, M., and J. C. Conery. 2000. The evolutionary fate and consequences of duplicate genes. Science 290: 1151-1154.

Lynch, M. 2002. Intron evolution as a population-genetic process. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 99: 6118-6123.

08:30 Thursday July 10

A member of the Caltech faculty since 1980, Meyerowitz studies the genetics of flowering plants. Specifically, he is interested in the genes that control the formation and development of flowers, that regulate growth at the shoot apical meristem, and that act in plant hormone responses. His laboratory has identified and cloned homeotic flower development genes, leading to the "ABC Model" of floral organ specification; was the first to clone plant hormone receptors (those for ethylene); and has demonstrated a mechanism for cell-cell communication in shoot apical meristems that involves an extracellular ligand and a transmembrane receptor kinase.

Meyerowitz received the Pelton Award from the Botanical Society of America and the Conservation Research Foundation in 1994, the Gibbs Medal from the American Society of Plant Physiologists in 1995, won the Genetics Society of America Medal and shared the LVMH "Science pour l'Art" Science Prize in 1996. He was awarded the International Prize for Biology by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in 1997, the Richard Lounsbery Award of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in 1999, and the Wilbur Cross Medal of Yale University in 2001. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the American Philosophical Society, and is a foreign associate of the Académie des Sciences of France.

Bowman, J.L., Smyth, D.R. and Meyerowitz, E.M. (1989) Genes directing flower development in Arabidopsis. Plant Cell 1, 37-52.

Meyerowitz, E.M. (2002) Plants compared to animals: the broadest comparative study of development. Science 295, 1482-1485.

16:30 Tuesday July 8

Miroslav Radman has been Professor at the Université Paris V (Faculté de médécine Necker-Enfants Malades) since 1998. He studied biology and physical chemistry at the University of Zagreb, and then obtained a Doctor of Science from the Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium, in 1969. After post-doctoral study in France (with Professor Raymond Devoret at CNRS, Gif-sur-Yvette) and the USA (with Dr Matthew Meselson at Harvard University), he was Professor in the Université libre de Bruxelles (1973-1983), and then Director of Research at the CNRS Laboratory of Mutagenesis, Institut Jacques Monod, Paris (1983-1998). Professor Radman's research is centred on the molecular mechanisms of DNA repair, and their role in the appearance of cancers, and the evolution of species. He proposed the general class of response of the cell to genotoxic shock known as SOS repair. He also showed the existence of endonuclease III, a repair enzyme that specifically repairs mutagenic lesions caused by the oxidation of thymine. He was involved in obtaining evidence for repair of mis-matched bases, and showed that it was involved in the precocious development of cancers in a mouse DNA repair mutant. Recently, Professor Radman's work has highlighted the role of mismatch repair in speciation, showing that it prevents recombination between similar chromosomal sequences, and thus assures the stability of genomes carrying repeated sequences, and the establishment of genetic barriers between closely related species. Professor Radman received the Spiridion Brusina Medal (Croatia) in 1998, the Richard Lounsbery Prize in 2000, and was elected to l'Académie des sciences, Paris in 2002.

Denamur E et al., 2000 Evolutionary implications of the frequent horizontal transfer of mismatch repair genes. Cell 103, 711-721

Giraud A et al., 2001 Costs and benefits of high mutation rates: adaptive evolution of bacteria in the mouse gut. Science 291, 2606-2608

Friedberg E C, Wagner R & Radman M 2002 Specialized DNA polymerases, cellular survival and the genesis of mutations. Science 296, 1627-1630

17:15 Friday July 11

Professor Saint graduated from Adelaide University, where he studied keratin gene structure in the earliest days of recombinant DNA technology. He then spent three years in Dr. David Hogness's laboratory at Stanford University, where he studied the structure and expression of the Bithorax Complex of Drosophila melanogaster. On returning to Australia, he worked at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute and the CSIRO Division of Entomology. In 1989 he moved back to Adelaide University, where he was one of the pioneers of research into cell cycle control in development, using D. melanogaster as a model.

In 1994 he was appointed Professor of Genetics at Adelaide University. He was an Australian Research Council (ARC) Special Investigator, from 1997-1999. He then led a successful bid for an ARC Special Research Centre, becoming Director of the Centre for the Molecular Genetics of Development, in 2000.

At the start of 2002, he moved to the Research School of Biological Sciences at the Australian National University as Professor of Molecular Genetics and Evolution. His research interests continue to be in the molecular genetics of cell division and gene expression during Drosophila development, with additional recent interests in the genetics and development of coral.

L. O'Keefe, W.G. Somers, A. Harley, and R. SAINT (2001) The Pebble GTP Exchange Factor and the Control of Cytokinesis. Cell Struct. Function 26:619-626

T. Shandala, R.D. Kortschak, S. Gregory and R. SAINT. (1999) The Drosophila dead ringer gene is required for normal embryonic patterning through regulation of argos and buttonhead expression. Development 126:4341-4349.