Cellular Genomics in Human Populations
Thursday, 15. September 2011 | 9:15 Uhr
Speaker
Organisation
Reporting
Professor Emmanouil Dermitzakis from the University of Geneva explained that cellular phenotypes are influenced by environmental effects, by development and time. Cellular genomes of a newly born baby and those of a sixty-year old person are different, even though they are genetically identical. Data collection takes into account whether a person smokes or does exercise. However, information is not gathered in great detail. It is necessary to include not only DNA but also the cellular phenotype, the organism’s phenotype or diseases in order to understand genetic interactions. Dermitzakis underlined the fact that it is crucial from which tissues the examined cellular genomes stem from. He outlined how the current progress in personalized medicine can fulfill the hopes with more efficient diagnoses and traits.
Emmanouil Dermitzakis
Emmanouil Dermitzakis is currently a Louis-Jeanet Professor of Genetics in the Department of Genetic Medicine and Development of the University of Geneva Medical School.
He obtained his B.Sc. in 1995 and M.Sc. in 1997 in Biology from the University of Crete (Greece) and his PhD in 2001 from the Pennsylvania State University in the US, studying the evolutionary biology and population genetics of regulatory DNA in mammals and Drosophila.
His post-doctoral work was at the University of Geneva Medical School, focusing on comparative genome analysis and the functional characterization of conserved non-genic elements. He previously was an Investigator and Senior Investigator at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute since April 2004.
His current research focuses on the genetic basis of regulatory variation and gene expression variation in the human genome the processes that govern non-coding DNA evolution. Genome Sequencing Consortium and the International HapMap project.
He now has a leading analysis role in the extension of the HapMap (aka HapMap3 project) and is a member of the analysis group of the 1000 genomes project.
