The Human Genome Project has the potential to help answer some of the deepest questions ever posed about humankind and the universe, College of Engineering professor Charles Delisi told a packed Tsai Performance Center on Monday night.
Delisi is known as the ‘Father of the Human Genome Project’ because of the major role he played in establishing the initiative while working for the Department of Energy in 1985, according to Provost Dennis Berkey, who introduced Delisi.
Delisi spent a large portion of his lecture discussing the scientific discoveries the Human Genome Project has produced to date, which include how the genome shows differences in people’s reactions to illnesses.
The makeup of the genome contains ‘a good part of the explanation for person-to-person variability in resistance and susceptibility to disease,’ he said.
In three examples provided during the lecture, Delisi showed slides showing how cystic fibrosis, Alzheimer’s disease and sickle cell anemia originate from mutations in a gene’s single base pair.
These finds were ‘important in ways that have not yet been fully recognized or exploited,’ he said.
Delisi particularly focused on how the project’s findings could affect the judicial system and crime investigations, claiming the project’s results will ensure that ‘not a single innocent will be swept away along with the guilty.’
A question-and-answer session followed his lecture, and one audience member jokingly asked which human’s genome was used for the project. Delisi responded that the project used between 50 and 60 people to get a representative mix of the human race.
‘Modern humans have only been around for 150,000 years, so there can’t be very much diversity,’ Delisi said.
The project has enabled scientists to know more about organs now and could do even more for biological science in the future, Delisi said.
‘We’re at a point where we can really begin to understand physiological systems,’ he said, explaining that it is a step up from individual cell processes.
Because people who can afford to use genetic technology will be able to give birth to healthier children, while poorer people will not have the same chance, Delisi said humans will ‘face a greater polarization of society in the next 20 years.’
Bernda Ventura, a College of Arts and Sciences freshman, said she enjoyed the lecture. The biology major said she thought it was ‘very informative.’
Before working at the Department of Energy, Delisi made important finds at the National Institutes of Health, particularly concerning the role of protein motifs as a predictor of biological function, according to the program handed out at the lecture. He joined Boston University faculty in 1990 as the dean of ENG and held the position until 2000.
He is also the first Arthur Metcalf Professor of Science and Engineering, and his Monday night address was the 59th University Lecture.
The University Lecture program began in 1950 and honors ‘faculty members engaged in outstanding research,’ Berkey said.
After faculty members nominate the lecturer, a committee made up of lecturers from the previous five years chooses who will speak, according to the event’s program.
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