Richard Gibbs on Surprises in the HGP
  Richard Gibbs     Biography    
Recorded: 14 May 2004

Oh, the surprises? Well, I think how dynamic the genome has shown itself to be, knowing that in the beginning we thought genomes were relatively static. That they didn’t change too much, and the kinds of variation we saw were predictable. Then when we discovered triplet repeats and dinucleotide repeats and all these other kinds of polymorphisms. I think there it was realized that there was still surprises in the mammalian genome to be discovered.

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.