| The 2004 Caskey Lecture, sponsored by the USC College of Science and Mathematics, will feature Leroy Hood as keynote speaker. The lecture will be held 6:45–8 p.m. April 12 in the USC School of Law Auditorium. It is free and open to the public.
The lecture topic will be "Systems Biology: Deciphering Life and Changing Medicine."
The advent of the Human Genome Project has transformed biology by providing a genetics parts list of all genes and proteins, by fueling the contention that biology is an informational science, and by catalyzing the emergence of biological information (e.g., rapid DNA sequencing or DNA chips). From this has emerged a new approach to biology termed systems biology, which is centered on the idea that one can study biological systems by delineating the relationships of all of their component elements and, hence, come to understand the resulting systems properties. The lecture will discuss these important points, give several examples of systems approaches, and conclude by discussing the profound change systems biology will engender in medicine, moving us toward a predictive, preventive, and personalized medicine.
Hood is recognized as one of the world's leading scientists in molecular biotechnology and genomics. He holds numerous patents for his scientific breakthroughs and prides himself on his lifelong commitment to making science accessible and understandable to the general public.
Hood earned an M.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1964 and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the California Institute of Technology in1968.
His professional career began at Caltech, where he and his colleagues pioneered four instruments—the DNA gene sequence and synthesizer, and the protein synthesizer and sequencer—that comprise the technological foundation for contemporary molecular biology. Hood was also one of the first advocates of and is a key player in the Human Genome Project, which is the quest to decipher the sequence of the human DNA.
Hood is a member of the National Academy of Science, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Association of Art and Sciences.
Hood's contributions to biotechnology have earned him the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Prize for Invention and Innovation. He also received the 2002 Kyoto Prize in Advanced Technology and he was presented the Lasker Award in 1987 for his studies on the mechanism of immune diversity.
For more information about the lecture, call 7-9201.
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Leroy Hood, president of the Institute of Systems Biology, will speak at USC April 12.
