Richard Gibbs on Baylor's Contribution to Drosophilia Project
  Richard Gibbs     Biography    
Recorded: 14 May 2004

We completed a third of drosophila melanogaster. That was all done in my group, yes.

Steven Scherer and David Wheeler and Kim Worley and Donna Muzny and George Weinstock. These are all key players in the Baylor contribution.

I think a year and a half ago…three years ago [it was completed], not so long ago that we put together this final assembly. And it’s still, the Berkeley crowd is still doing some of the heterochromatin and some of the difficult parts and I think they want to move ahead and say there’s another version to come out before the complete genome

Richard A. Gibbs is currently the Director of the Human Genome Sequencing Center at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) and the Wofford Cain Professor in the Department of Molecular and Human Genetics. He received a B.Sc. (Hons) in 1979 and a Ph.D. in Genetics and Radiation Biology in 1985 at the University of Melbourne in Australia. In 1990 he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine, studying the molecular basis of human X-linked diseases and developing technologies for rapid genetic analysis. He developed several fundamental technologies for nucleic acid analysis. In 1991, he joined the BCM faculty and played a key role in the early planning and development phases of the Human Genome Project. In 1996, he established the BCM Human Genome Sequencing Center when Baylor was chosen as one of six programs to complete the final phase of the Human Genome Project. Dr. Gibbs has also made significant contributions to the deciphering of the fly, mouse, dictyostelium, and rat genomes. Among the numerous awards and honors received by Dr. Gibbs, he was awarded the Michael E. DeBakey, M.D., Excellence in Research Award in 2000.