Article from Newsweek
(photo from my personal collection)
The 10 Hottest Nerds
NEWSWEEK
Oct 15, 2007 Issue
The revolution in physics in the 20th century rested disproportionately on the accomplishments of a handful of scientists (Albert Einstein comes to mind) who supplied key insights at just the right moments. The current explosion of discoveries in the biological sciences is no different. NEWSWEEK ASKED 10 of the most esteemed biologists where they think the revolution is taking us. Which among them will turn out to be the Einsteins of the 21st century? You decide.
Svante Paabo
Director of evolutionary genetics, Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany.
NEWSWEEK: You are trying to sequence the genome of a Neanderthal. Why?
Paabo: The genetic differences we find between humans and our closest relative—who happens to be extinct—will tell us how fully modern humans were able to spread over the world, develop technology, start producing art, and so on. By sequencing the genome we will be able to make a catalogue of all the genetic changes that happened in our ancestors after we separated from Neanderthals, and this will help scientists identify which genetic differences are unique to modern humans.
NEWSWEEK: This a good time to be a biologist.
Paabo: It's certainly an extremely exciting time to be a biologist. We've seen the determination of the first genomes of single individuals by Craig Venter and James Watson, and this is just the beginning of the determination of many hundreds of thousands of individual genomes. This will vastly increase our abilities to look for genetic contributions to diseases and other human traits.
NEWSWEEK: Would you call this a revolution?
Paabo: It is of course always very hard to realize if you are experiencing a revolution when you are in the middle of it. Let's not forget that when we discovered the structure of DNA in the 1950s, which in hindsight we would say was truly revolutionary, it actually took around four years before anybody realized it was important. It may certainly be that we overlook things when we're in the middle of them.
Right now there seems to be a number of simultaneous advances in biomedicine. [But] I would not necessarily say that there is a reason why. At the moment there appears to be some sort of synergy between a number of fields, but this is possibly an illusion.
NEWSWEEK: How could your findings benefit people down the road?
Paabo: In the long run, aspects of what we do might become important medically. It may be that we can understand, for example, human speech and how language evolved. This could enable us to understand and eventually treat language problems more efficiently. That may also be true for things such as autism, and other diseases that seem to be specific to humans.
The top 10 hottest nerds are (click here for the full artilce):
* Eric Lander
- Founding director of the Broad Institute, a collaboration between Harvard and MIT
* Leroy Hood
- PRESIDENT of the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle
* J. Craig Venter
- Founder, J. Craig Venter Institute
* David Botstein
- Professor of genomics at Princeton University
* Svante Paabo
- Director of evolutionary genetics, Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany.
* Phillip Sharp
- Institute professor, MIT
* Rudolph Jaenisch
- MEMBER, Whitehead Institute, and professor of biology at MIT
* KARI STEFANSSON
- CEO, chairman and co-founder of deCODE Genetics in Reykjavik.
* George Church
- Professor of genetics, Harvard University
* Jay Keasling
- Professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley
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