Dr. Andrew Fire is the co-discoverer of RNA interference. He is the 2006 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine, and Professor, Departments of Pathology and Genetics, Stanford University School of Medicine.

Dr. Fire’s lab studies the mechanisms by which cells and organisms respond to genetic change.

The genetic landscape faced by a living cell is constantly changing. Developmental transitions, environmental shifts, and pathogenic invasions lend a dynamic character to both the genome and its activity pattern. The Fire Lab studies a variety of natural mechanisms that are utilized by cells adapting to genetic change.

These include mechanisms activated during normal development and systems for detecting and responding to foreign or unwanted genetic activity. At the root of these studies are questions of how a cell can distinguish “self” versus “nonself” and “wanted” versus “unwanted” gene expression.

The Fire Lab primarily makes use of the nematode C. elegans in experimental studies. C. elegans is small, easily cultured, and can readily be made to accept foreign DNA or RNA. The results of such experiments have outlined a number of concerted responses that recognize (and in most cases work to silence) the foreign nucleic acid. One such mechanism (RNAi) responds to double-stranded character in RNA: either as introduced experimentally into the organism or as produced from foreign DNA that has not undergone selection to avoid a dsRNA response.

Much of the current effort in the lab is directed toward a molecular understanding of the RNAi machinery and its roles in the cell. RNAi is not the only cellular defense against unwanted nucleic acid, and substantial current effort in the lab is also directed at identification of other triggers and mechanisms used in recognition and response to foreign information.

In our wide-ranging SCIENCE AND SOCIETY interview, done on 1-10-07, Dr. Fire discusses

• Process of discovery of RNA interference
• How can cellular machinery recognize certain informational molecules as ‘unwanted’
• How can the cell use this recognition to effectively silence malicious genetic activity
• RNA interference vs. “traditional” immunity
• Physiological factors modulating RNA interference to allow maximal response to pathogen RNAs
• Mechanisms by which cells and organisms respond to genetic change
• New frontiers in RNAi and its potential medical applications
• Potential future implications for RNA interference
• What advances from the field as a whole in the last couple of years are likely to revolutionize biology and medicine

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine, medicine, RNA_interference

Dr. Francis Barany is Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Program of Biochemistry and Structural Biology at Cornell/Sloan Kettering Institute in New York City. Dr. Barany is also Director of Mutation Research at the Strang Cancer Prevention Center. He is program director of two multi-center NCI and NIAID grants to develop new methods of cancer and infectious disease detection.

Dr. Barany is best known for developing the ligase chain reaction and ligase detection reaction, and Universal DNA arrays for detection of genetic diseases and cancer-associated mutations. He was named to the “SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN 50″ in 2004.

In our in-depth 7-12-07 interview, Dr. Barany discusses

• How to detect cancer while it’s hidden in the genome
• Comprehensive molecular profiling of colon tumors
• The universal array genomic chip which is used for the rapid and accurate detection of cancers and other diseases, especially breast and colon cancer
• How the ligase chain reaction detects single-base mutations
• Grand challenges in cancer therapy

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_counseling, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine

Dr. Charis Eng is Chair and Founding Director of the Genomic Medicine Institute at the Cleveland Clinic Foundation, and Professor and Vice Chairman, Department of Genetics, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

Dr. Eng’s research interests may be broadly characterized as clinical cancer genetics translational research. Her work on RET testing in multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2 and the characterization of the widening clinical spectra of PTEN gene mutations have been acknowledged as the paradigm for the practice of clinical cancer genetics.

Dr. Eng has published over 230 peer-reviewed original papers in such journals as the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Lancet, Nature Genetics, Nature.

In our wide-ranging SCIENCE AND SOCIETY interview, done on 8-9-07, Dr. Eng discusses

• What is genomic medicine?
• Personalized genetic risk assessment
• Genetic counseling
• Genetic testing and genetic screening

Technorati Tags: cancer_research, genetic_counseling, genetic_testing, genomic_medicine