President Shirley Tilghman and biology professor David Botstein recounted tales of their involvement as young scientists in the Human Genome Project and gave their opinions on hot topics in molecular biology in a talk Tuesday afternoon.

The talk, titled Speaking of Genetics ... Five Years Later was led by author Jane Gitschier, a professor at the Institute of Human Genetics at the University of California San Francisco, who first interviewed Tilghman and Botstein separately in 2006 for the journal PLoS Genetics. Gitschier also incorporated interviews with them into her own book published in 2010 called Speaking of Genetics: A Collection of Interviews.

Tilghman and Botstein said in the interview that they first met in Phillip Leders laboratory at the National Institutes of Health in Washington, D.C., in the mid- 1970s. At the time, Tilghman was working as a postdoctoral student with molecular biology professor Lynn Enquist on cloning a single gene from the mouse genome coding for a piece of the hemoglobin protein, which transports oxygen in red blood cells.

Botstein and Tilghman met again as the youngest members of the Alberts Committee, a committee of scientists arranged by the National Academy of Sciences and Bruce Alberts to weigh the pros and cons of sequencing the human genome. Both recalled initial concerns about moving forward with the Human Genome Project, which completed sequencing in 2006.

What many of us who worked with model organisms were concerned about was going ahead and focusing on only sequencing the human genome, Tilghman said. My concern in the beginning was the narrow thinking about the project, she added.

Tilghman explained that at the time of the committee, the difficulty of sequencing DNA by hand led to concerns about not addressing the genomes of model

organisms such as E. coli and C. elegans, which are commonly used in biological research.

One of the amusing things about [the Human Genome Project report] is that I ended up writing the sequencing chapter. As it turned out, I was the only one who actually knew how to sequence DNA. The others hadnt got their hands dirty in years, Tilghman said.

Botstein also noted the difficulty of sequencing DNA and the funding problems that the project encountered.

My concern was that [sequencing the human genome] would do to biology the same thing the space shuttle did to planetary astronomy, which would be to eat up all the funds and siphon money away from other projects, Botstein said.

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Tilghman reflects on DNA study