From Inventory to Blueprint: Determining the Functions of Essential Genes

Thanks to genome sequencing efforts from ~20 years ago, scientists have an inventory list of all the genes that are required to build an organism. Have you ever wondered how scientists figure out the function of those genes and convert inventory lists into models and blueprints? What does each gene do and how do gene products work together to build cells, tissues, and organisms? Dr. Rebecca Green has been working for the past 15 years to decipher the function of essential genes. Her work sits at the interface of systems biology, computational biology, genetics, and cell and developmental biology. Rebecca Green, Ph.D. is a Visiting Scientist at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and Bioinformatics Scientist at UC San Diego, where she spearheads an effort to functionally map essential developmental pathways using cutting-edge microscopy-based methods and the model organism C. elegans. Rebecca earned her Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis, was an American Cancer Society postdoctoral fellow at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, and is the author of numerous top-tier scientific papers and book chapters. Green has explored different biological questions at small and large scales, using bacterial systems, model organisms and human cells throughout her scientific career. She has always been drawn to microscopy-based approaches to answer scientific questions because of its versatility, beauty, and the effectiveness of an image to communicate complex ideas.