As
part of
the
“Science and
Citizenship” series of conferences, o
rganised by
the Catalonia Public University Association (ACUP), Roderic Guigó, full professor of biology at the
CEXS at UPF, and
a researcher
at the
Centre for Genomic
Regulation
(CRG)
research centre affiliated to the UPF, gave the lecture “Human Essence in a chip? From the
genome to the computer” on November 4 at 7:00 p.m. in the Cosmocaixa building (Teodor
Roviralta, 47-51, Barcelona) The same lecture will be given next Thursday, 19th November at 7:00
p.m., at the office of the “La Caixa” Foundation in Girona (c/Santa Cl
ara,
11).
Research on genomics: past, prese nt and future
The decoding of the human genome sequence in 2001 was a major breakthrough which opened up many new perspectives in the field of biomedical sciences. Eight years later, Roderic Guigó reviewed the significance of the Human Genome Project, and especially the role played by information technology, and considered the real impact of the project in the fields of biology and biomedicine, while highlighting th e research lines that remain open and the anticipated results of current research in this field.
Roderic Guigó obtained his degree in Biology from the University of Barcelona. After receiving his doctorate from the same university, he went to the Farber Cancer Institute of Boston (USA) where he worked in the field of biological sequence analysis for three years. He then moved to the National Laboratory of Los Álamos (USA) where he did research work for two more years, with particular focus on genomic analysis . In 1994, he joined the Municipal Institute of Medical Research (IMIM), a research centre affiliated to the UPF, and he has been a professor in the CEXS department at UPF since 1999. In 2005, he joined the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG), a research centre affiliated to the UPF, to coordinate the research program on Bioinformatics and Genomics, and combined his research with teaching work. He has received the Barcelona City Award (2003) and as well as participating in the Human Genome Project, he has collaborated in the American ENCODE Project and is currently working on the BioSapiens project, a Europe- wide Biotechnology network.