Summary of GEMS Spring Meeting
by Gloria D. Jahnke, GEMS Secretary & photos by Steve McCaw, Image Associates
The theme for GEMS Spring meeting was “ Integrative Bioinformatics: Systems Biology Approaches to Genetics, Metabolism & Disease”. This meeting, on April 16, 2007, was the first meeting that GEMS held at US EPA facilities at Research Triangle Park, NC. The meeting had a half-day format beginning with a light buffet lunch followed by presentations by four invited speakers. Dr. Michael Yaffe, an invited speaker from MIT, was unable to attend due to inclement weather on the east coast. Dr. Stuart expressed Dr. Yaffe’s regrets.
President, Dr. Greg Stuart welcomed attendees and noted that 2007 is the 25th anniversary for GEMS. He thanked the Hamner Institutes for Health Sciences for providing name tags, ILS for providing meeting programs, and the US EPA for providing the meeting facility. He also thanked Susan Ross, Cindy Innes, and Diane Spencer for their help with registration and Steve McCaw for photographing this event. He also noted that President-Elect RoseAnne McGee was recovering from surgery and was unable to attend.
Dr. Bennett Van Houten, NIEHS, gave the opening talk on “Systems approaches to understanding Friedrich’s Ataxia from yeast to man”. His talk introduced the audience to systems biology and defined it as "a compete description of how the components of a biological system work together". Furthermore, he outlined research tools that contribute information to a systems approach and used his work on Friedrich’s ataxia as an example. This fatal disease results in generalized muscle weakness in young adults with eventual death from hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. From studies in yeast and in peripheral human lymphocytes from patients with Friedrich’s ataxia, he described how a mitochondrial protein, frataxin, was important for iron homeostasis and had a key role in the pathogenesis of this disease.
Dr. Christopher Portier, NIEHS, gave a presentation entitled, “Chipping away on risk assessment: systems biology, computer chips, gene chips and modern biology”. His talk focused on the application of genomics and high throughput screening in risk assessment noting that science is only one component of toxicological risk assessment, with economics and societal needs other factors.
After a brief intermission, Dr. William Kaufmann, UNC, spoke on “Systems biology of environmental cancer”. This presentation focused on using the systems biology approach to investigate protein markers in the pathogenesis of melanoma.
The final presentation, “Using systems biology to study pleiotropy: a case study in yeast” was presented by Dr. Paul Magwene, Duke University. The concept of pleiotropy–that a single gene influences multiple traits or phenotypes–was discussed using the yeast life cycle as an example. Yeast can multiply by sexual or asexual reproduction depending upon the environment and food source.
A reception followed the meeting and afforded everyone the opportunity for further discussions with the speakers.