TCD graduate played key role

The British scientific community is justifiably proud of its contribution to the Human Genome Project. But its government does not deserve the same kind of plaudits as it declined to come up with the massive funding required to do the job.

The Wellcome Trust stepped in so its portion of the work could proceed, and a graduate of Trinity College Dublin, Dr Michael Morgan, played a key role in liaising between the trust and the Sanger Centre where the UK's DNA sequencing was carried out.

Sequencing the human genome provides a legacy that would produce new treatments for generations to come, according to Dr Morgan, who is chief executive of the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus.

The realisation would dawn that sequencing the human genome was the beginning of biology and medicine based on a fundamental understanding of the underlying processes of life. "It is going to provide, for the first time in biology, a fundamental foundation on which everything in the future will relate to and, to an extent, be dependent upon."

He believes the genome sequence enhances the wonder of life rather than reducing human beings to a collection of chemicals. "There is something magical in knowing that all life on the planet, be it plant, bacterial or animal, is related in some way."

The length of DNA in each human being, if added together, stretches from here to the sun and back many times which, he says, is quite extraordinary and awe-inspiring.

Dr Morgan is to join Dr John Sulston at a seminar in TCD on Friday, July 7th, when details of the Human Genome Project will be presented in a format designed for a general audience. Promoted by the Smurfit School of Genetics, the RDS and The Irish Times, it takes place at the Joly Theatre, Hamilton Building (enter at Lincoln Place), from 10 a.m. to midday. Admission is free. Dr Sulston will receive an honorary degree from the university on Friday afternoon.