Dr. Gregory’s  current position is at UPenn: He became interested in the field by doing graduate work in biochemistry and bacterial genetics, where he studied mutated amino acids in sigma section 74. He wanted to get a more global look into transcript regulations.

The balance of work and life: Dr. Gregory works a lot but has two small children so he works hard when at work, and does not bring his work home with him.

Current position/research: Dr. Gregory started to study genomics and RNA silencing in plants, this approach is meant to look at dsRNA globally. They were able to find structural information about RNA. In addition they used ssRNA nuclease unpaired base information for a global study. The absence of bound proteins allowed it to be applied to human cells, they used UV light to cross link. They were also able to cross link RNA’s to proteins to find the footprint of all RNA-protein interactions. They found that non Watson-crick base pairing of U and T is not as strong, this can be seen in Drosophila where heterochromatic modifications are present (dsRNA becomes smRNA). With regard to mutations in the lab, they are generally ignored, but the mutation rate can be used in results. They allow no more than 5 mutations per 50 base pair read. In addition, RBP binding sites of mRNA’s have less genetic diversity, the sites are maintained at a specific sequence.

His field in the future: The government pays a lot of money for Mod and Code, but there are papers for comparison to data sets that already exist, so that money could be put to better use. They can also use the power of data for new discoveries.

Up and Coming: 

  • Sequencing and diagnostic tools
  • Computers must improve, better processors would increase data sequencing and processing speed
  • Computational biology must keep up as well
  • Developing new genomics approaches, ex: mass spec machine
  • Genomic medicine

Potential careers?:

  • Engineering is a rapidly growing field where development must happen in computers, especially computer storage (better cooled storage units and computers).
  • Bioengineering – new sequencers are needed
  • Mass spec designers

Advice:

  • Future biologists must have a background in genomics
  • Computer programming is heavily linked to computational biology
  • Databasing is important
  • The more efficient, the better.