August 9, 2001
Contact: Tim Stephens (831) 459-2495; stephens@cats.ucsc.edu

WEBCAST WILL ENSURE BROAD PUBLIC ACCESS TO THE UC SANTA CRUZ PUBLIC FORUM ON HUMAN GENOME RESEARCH

SANTA CRUZ, CA--The University of California, Santa Cruz, will host a public forum on human genome research on Saturday, August 25, featuring a keynote address by Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and a moderated discussion by a panel of experts. Public interest in this free event has been strong, and most of the advance tickets have already been claimed. For those unable to attend in person, however, a live webcast of the forum will be available online. For more information, visit the web site for the UCSC Human Genome Symposium at http://genomesymposium.ucsc.edu/.

The forum will address research on the human genome and its implications for the future of medicine and society. It will take place from 1 to 3:30 p.m. in the Music Center Recital Hall on the UC Santa Cruz campus. All 400 seats in the Recital Hall have been reserved and tickets are going fast for seats in the overflow site, which will have a live link to the Recital Hall.

The forum's panelists will include Collins; Eugene Myers, vice president of informatics research at Celera Genomics; Mary-Claire King, professor of medicine and genetics at the University of Washington; and Robert Sinsheimer, UCSC chancellor emeritus and professor of biology emeritus. National Public Radio science reporter Richard Harris, a UCSC graduate, will serve as moderator.

The public forum is being held in conjunction with a scientific workshop, which will be closed to all but the invited participants. Some of the scientists taking part in the workshop also attended the historic 1985 workshop at UCSC that helped launch the Human Genome Project. The 1985 workshop was organized by Sinsheimer, then chancellor of the UCSC campus. With the completion of a working draft of the human genome sequence in 2000, eminent scientists are gathering again at UCSC to discuss future directions for research on the human genome.

A special art exhibit, Genomic Art: Portrait of the 21st Century, is also being held in conjunction with the Human Genome Symposium. The exhibit is on display at UCSC's Baskin Visual Arts Center through August 27.

The human genome sequence--spelled out in 3.2 billion units of DNA strung together on chromosomes--represents the complete genetic instructions for human life. Deciphering the genome has sparked a revolution in biomedical research, raising hopes for dramatic improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The genomics revolution also includes research on a broad range of organisms and promises to yield new insights into the biology and diversity of all forms of life.

Major challenges lie ahead, however, as researchers seek to apply the knowledge gained from recent advances in genomics. Key scientific goals include the mapping of human variation; identifying and validating the complete set of human genes; and understanding the diversity of life through genomic analysis of many organisms. These are some of the issues scientists will discuss at the UC Santa Cruz Human Genome Symposium.

Other concerns relate to how the use of genetic information and technology will affect society. From the beginning, the publicly funded Human Genome Project has made every effort to inform the public about its work and to address not only the scientific issues but also the social and ethical issues raised by the project. In the public forum, panelists will address the ethical, legal, and privacy issues associated with genome research, as well as its anticipated benefits in medicine and other areas.

Although the bulk of the work on the Human Genome Project has been performed elsewhere, researchers at UCSC played a crucial role in assembling the genome sequence, and they continue to have a major role in the ongoing analysis of the human genome. UCSC's participation in the project is led by David Haussler, professor of computer science at UCSC and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

UCSC was the first site to post the assembled human genome sequence on the web, distributing it freely without any restrictions on use (see http://genome.ucsc.edu). The UCSC webservers currently process more than 50,000 requests for information each day from biomedical researchers worldwide who want to explore the assembled genome sequence.

Haussler and other UCSC researchers continue to work on the analysis of the human genome sequence and the ongoing task of filling in gaps and updating the assembled sequence as new data become available. Their work includes comparing the human genome to the genomes of other organisms to better understand how DNA orchestrates the activities within our living cells.

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