Eric Green: Good morning everyone. I'm Eric Green, the
director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, and on behalf of NHGRI, I want
to welcome you to our celebration of genomics, both of its recent past and more importantly,
its exciting future. I want to start today's symposium by just spending a few minutes setting
the context for the event, and each year I chose to hold this event today to commemorate
a really, a truly historic year for both genomics and also specifically for our institute.
Just to remind you, 20 years ago this past October, the Human Genome Project began. At
that time, I was a second-year postdoctoral fellow actually training with our wrap-up
speaker that you'll see at the end of the day, and I could vividly remember the sense
of purpose that all of us involved with the project felt about the planned effort. I can
also remember the great sense of fear 20 years ago, as we were not exactly certain how it
is that we were going to actually map and sequence the human genome. Those fears gave
way to hard work and creative energies, and remarkably, roughly 10 years ago in June of
2000, a draft human-genome sequence was completed, President Clinton presided over this historic
announcement of this incredible accomplishment at the White House, and even the popular press
recognized that this was a huge moment for humanity. Just a few months later, the publication
reporting the draft human-genome sequence and its initial analysis was published and
shown here as the historic issue of Nature, published on February 15, 2001. Today's symposium
is aligned around these historic events of 20 years and 10 years ago, but timed more
closely to the 10th anniversary of this publication of Nature. And the reason for that is that
Nature published yesterday something in an issue that essentially commemorated the 10th
anniversary of this issue of Nature, their latest issue of Nature, and contained within
that was an important paper for NHGRI and for the field of genomics, and NHGRI therefore
wanted to have this symposium specifically a day after this important paper came out,
which is a new strategic vision for genomics, formulated by the genomics community in partnership
with NHGRI. It really represents a culmination of a two-and-a-half-year planning process
that our institute went through to identify and really try to articulate the most exciting
opportunities in genomics, with a particular emphasis on medical applications of genomics.
Now, it's important in telling you about our strategic plan to really set a context, recognizing
that preparing and publishing strategic plans really is very common, and I think is part
of the cultural aspects of both genomics and NHGRI. Part of the reason for that is what
I articulated earlier: we got through the genome project guided by a series of overlapping
strategic plans that really served a key organizing framework for accomplishing the audacious
goals of the genome project. And when the genome project ended in 2003, we carried out
a similar planning process for a couple of years that allowed us to put together a vision
for genomics beyond the human genome project. The current process, recognizing that the
publication in 2003 probably needed to be renewed a little and updated, the current
process for our institute was actually kicked off two-and-a-half years ago by then-NHGRI
Director, a guy that you may have heard of called Francis Collins. When Francis departed
the institute, Alan Guttmacher continued leadership of this planning process, and then when I
became the director about 14 months ago, I said we're going to finish this over the next
year or so and get this out, and indeed, that is what we have now accomplished by getting
it in this commemorative issue of Nature.
So all of you were provided a copy, and if you didn't, they're out on the table, please
take one, of this issue of Nature that come out yesterday, courtesy of Nature Publishing
Group. It is a special anniversary issue of this, and in it is, contains several papers
which I'll tell you about, but I really do want to make a special thank you to Nature
Publishing, who have just been terrific partners in this process, and both Magdalena Skipper,
who is the editor that oversees genomics publications; also Phil Campbell, who is the editor-in-chief
of Nature, and in particular they were -- out of their idea, they heard about this symposium
today and actually extended the print run of Nature and rush-shipped all these issues
because they wanted all of you to have them in hard copy as part of this celebratory day.
So my special thanks to Nature for being such wonderful partners in this.
There are three papers of note in this issue. There is our paper, charting a course for
genomic medicine from [unintelligible] begins with b] to bedside, NHGRI's new strategic
plan; there is a wonderful review by Eric Lander, who you're going to hear from in a
couple speakers, and I will just wait because I think he's going to tell you lots about
the exciting things he describes in this review; there's also a very nice perspective about
DNA-sequencing technologies that Elaine Mardis of Washington University wrote. When you actually
open this issue and find our paper, you will also see within it a very nice -- what's called
a roll-fold, or a poster; it folds out. And this to us serves as Figure 1, as a nice reminder
of all these incredible accomplishments that have taken place in genomics, starting before
the Human Genome Project, sort of on the left side, and then sort of electrifying this futuristic
light bulb is all of the data and technologies and opportunities that were created by all
of these accomplishments in the Genome Project and before, and that has energized the field
and propelled it forward on the right side of this figure over the last seven years or
so and we've just sort of highlighted some of these incredible landmark milestones that
have taken place.
I would point out that one of the things, if you ask me sort of, what are the key things
that has really energized and propelled the field of genomics forward, we wanted to sneak
it in graphically and that's right there, which is a simple representation of what's
happened in DNA sequencing in the last five and six years or so and since the end of the
Genome Project, and in fact we have, as part of this paper, now a website as an electronic
supplement, if you will, to the paper talking about sequencing costs, because we track them
at NHGRI, especially those associated with our large sequencing centers. We collect lots
of information, and now in downloadable form, feel free to go to this website and download
these images, and we will continually update them as we collect more data. It's just this
remarkable dropping of sequencing costs, either categorized based on cost per megabase or
cost per sequence in the human genome. With the introduction of these new technologies,
notice the plummeting in the cost of sequencing -- this is on a logarithmic scale -- and
indicated in white is Moore's Law, this law of the computer industry that everything doubles
and gets better by a factor of two every 24 months. Sequencing technology has blown Moore's
Law out of the water, and we believe this is one of the key things that has just catapulted
genomics forward, all sorts of exciting opportunities that I am absolutely certain you'll be hearing
about from various speakers today.
Now the other thing about strategic plans, we have found, is that we need to have an
organizing framework, the metaphors and just sort of imagery that sort of helps, sort of,
give a framework for what we want to describe in our plans. In 2003, this was this famous
house that organized our thinking around genomics as it connected to biology, to health and
society, all built on a firm bedrock of the Human Genome Project. And this has served
us well, but it was time for sort of a more sophisticated, more nuanced, and more futuristic
view of what's really going to happen as genomics gets applied to medicine. And so we will be
retiring this graphic and replacing it with Figure 2 of the paper, which we think now,
through lots of great input we got from the community, really helps capture many of the
great hurdles that lie ahead, but also many of these opportunities, recognizing them in
a series of progressive domains starting with understanding the structure of genomes, understanding
the biology of genomes, moving on to understand the biology of disease, using that information
to advance the science of medicine and eventually improve the effectiveness of healthcare.
Also, we represented in totally hypothetical density plots, accomplishments that, one:
either we believe have happened during the Genome Project or in the previous seven years;
or more importantly, as we project out the next decade or the decade beyond, where we
might be seeing major accomplishments in each of these five domains of activity. So we have
organized our entire strategic plan around these five areas, and I invite you to read
the article that all of you now have before you and consider this, and then think about
what's been accomplished in the last two decades, and more importantly for what we're thinking
about in the future, what's going to happen the next two decades.
So this is a celebratory day for us, and really a celebratory week. It was a long journey
to get to this publication, and involved lots of people and we thank many of those individuals
who are in the audience, and many elsewhere for helping us accomplish this important publication.
If you want to read more and get to all sorts of other information about our strategic planning
process, this is the URL: genome.gov/sp, for strategic plan 2011. But now it's time to
celebrate, and we want to celebrate. We actually wanted to pop champagne; the NIH police don't
allow alcohol on campus. We wanted to have fireworks; the NIH fire marshal won't allow
fireworks in Natcher Auditorium. So we had to figure out another way to celebrate, and
our celebration is: gather some of the great minds in genomics and some of our great colleagues,
bring them together for a day in here, and let them loose, and these are these individuals.
More detail, of course, is provided in the program, and that's what the day is going
to bring us. It includes some great figures in science and in genomics and genetics. It
includes the NIH director, who I'll be introducing in a minute. It includes both former NHGRI
directors before myself, one being the next speaker, the NIH director, but also includes
Jim Watson, who we're very glad is here and will be participating in the panel discussion
after lunch. I should point out, there's a slight deviation from the program in that
we were hoping that Congressman Michael Burgess of Texas was going to be able to join us for
that panel discussion. He's talked about in the program and it was only the dicey situation
because it all was related to when votes were going to get scheduled, and unfortunately
it now looks that the in votes are going to -- he has to be participating votes in the
Congress this afternoon, and so is not going to be able to make it today. So outside of
that, we believe the program will stand as it is printed. And we are delighted all of
you are here, and we are looking forward to the day.
So NHGRI and genomics, we're having this party, we're celebrating it by marveling at the past
and then anticipating the future. What I am convinced the speakers are going to tell you
from this podium today, and think about and provide you a perspective, is looking back
on 10 years ago, how science seemed to change when we generated that first sequence, the
human genome, and what a remarkable decade has been that now has created a bright new
future in this moment in time. But more importantly, I know what we're going to hear from them
is the future, as depicted by our iconic figure in particular focusing on the next decade
and then beyond. And I expect that you're going to enjoy it when you hear what they
have to say, and in thinking about this incredible set of challenges we have, but also these
incredible opportunities.
I wanted to just tell you a few more things about this symposium. First thing is that
we have a dedicated website, genome.gov/symposium2011. It will have many relevant links, if you want
to go back and see all sorts of things we'll be posting on there. It is also a place that
people are going to be accessing this because we are videocasting this live, and we expect
actually many, many people to be watching this live, and so all of you who are remote,
welcome. But we will also be video-archiving all of the talks, and so I wanted to -- by
the way, for those of you who are watching, if you're interested in the program that was
handed out, we actually have a PDF now up on this website where you can quickly download
and get even more information about the speakers and so forth. For all of you, or if you have
colleagues that may want to watch these talks after the fact, we expect to have many, many
visitors, after the fact, looking at our video. You just go to this website and we will have
all the relevant links to get you to all the video archives afterwards. In addition, we
have a lot of -- and we'd love to have increasing numbers of youthful, energetic, young scientists
and others, and their culture is to blog, and so we have associated with this a symposium
blog, which either you can access by once again going to the symposium website, or this
is the more direct URL to the blog. Actually, I was told by my staff, it's technically not
a blog, it's a microblog. And I constantly ask my staff what's the difference between
a blog and a microblog, and they always tell me a microblog is smaller. I don't really
understand what that means, but apparently we're a microblog, we're not a blog, and you
can join in, and when we've done this previously and we do this for lots of our meetings now,
it is amazing how many bloggers are out, and I know there's some of you in the audience
-- in fact, I can see a couple right now -- I know who'll actively be blogging all
day.
I'll also tell you that in addition to these remote participants and this blogging, we've
also had a little bit of outreach last evening. We had a wonderful evening to kick off, sort
of a pre-festivities for today, down at the Koshland Museum -- Science Museum -- we had
a science cafe in downtown D.C. Amy McGuire and Amy Harmon, who are two of the speakers
being featured today, came in early, and I MCd this event. And at this event, we brought
in middle school -- and then there's Carla Easter, who was our organizer who helped facilitate
all this -- and we had middle-school and high-school science educators and some students come down,
and sat and talked to them and answered questions and really had a stimulating discussion for
a couple hours downtown to kick off these celebratory events.
I, in closing, just cannot tell you what a fantastic staff we have at NHGRI, and without
them we'd never be able to pull off strategic planning processes and great publications
and symposiums and events like this. I just want to acknowledge them. I just want to show
you appreciate a great organizing committee, chaired by Kris Wetterstrand and Alice , Vance,
Carla, Rudy, Annette, Julie, Larry, and Susan, thank you all very much. We have, I think,
the best medical illustrator, , graphics artist, probably in the world, as far as I'm concerned,
Darryl Leja, and all of these various images you're seeing in the paper and up here and
on the website are all his creation, with help from Jay Latman, so thanks to Darryl
and others for those contributions. And then we have lots of activity around our -- lots
of videos that are going to be shown and talked about, and the website and the blog and these
individuals listed here, Jeannine, Maggie, Jane, Alvaro, Ben, Geoff, Raymond, Feynip
[spelled phonetically], Omar, Judy, Mukul, and Larry Thompson, who directs all of these
individuals as head of our communications, and all a big thank you for that.
And so finally, I'm going to just tell you a couple more logistics. First thing: We are
going to attempt to have a brief questions-and-answers after each speaker. If we run out of time,
we're going to have to skip the question-answer, but if people want to ask questions, please
go to the microphones that are in the aisles in particular, because there's people listening
in remote and they want to be able to hear your questions. During the breaks today -- the
morning break, the lunch break, and then the afternoon break -- we'll be selling some videos
that our communications team put together, some new interviews. The morning break will
be focused on the use of genomic technologies in basic science. The lunch break will be
a historic perspective of the 50 years between the discovery of the double helix and the
completion of the Human Genome Project. The afternoon break will be focused on clinical
applications of genomic sciences. I'm going to chair the morning session, and Mark Guyer,
who is the director of our extramural program and was a key partner with me of getting the
strategic plan across the finish line, will be chairing the afternoon session. And by
the way, at lunch, when you get your food, you can bring your food back in here and watch
the video, so it's going to just like being at Disney all day. We're just going to overwhelm
you with lots of activities.
[laughter]
But that's a good thing, and then you can all go home and rest. So with that, I will
close, and have -- oh, and the other thing is, we are going to have incredibly brief
introductions of our speakers, not because we don't have great respect for them, but
we figure you'd rather hear them speak than to have us up here, basically read their bios,
which are all available and printed nicely in the program. So I will simply introduce
the next speaker --