The Human Genome Project:

Past, Present & Future

October 3, 2002

Amy Cralle Theater

Dr. Bruce Roe taught high school chemistry and physics for five years before receiving his doctorate in Biochemistry from Western Michigan University in 1970.  He received a prestigious Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Institutes of Health to work at SUNY Stony Brook, and later  served as faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Kent State University until 1981. Since that time he has worked at the University of Oklahoma , where he now is the George Lynn Cross Research Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.  In 1978-79, he did a sabbatical with Dr. Fred Sanger (who was soon to win a second Nobel Prize, this time for developing an elegant DNA sequencing technique) in Cambridge , England .  When back in Oklahoma , Dr. Roe founded the Advanced Center for Genomic Technology (ACGT), one of the first human genome centers in the U.S.   He still serves as director of this center.  This facility focused on automating the process of DNA sequencing and on computational analysis, which led to the publication of the first human chromosome DNA sequence (chromosome 22) in 1999, and the entire human genome sequence in 2001, years ahead of schedule.  The ACGT was one of the first to formally agree to release genomic data immediately to the general public.  Dr. Roe is currently working on sequencing the genomes of primates, plants, and numerous disease organisms.