Aravinda Chakravarti
Aravinda Chakravarti Aravinda Chakravarti, Ph.D., is a human geneticist and a computational biologist. A native of India, Chakravarti is perhaps best known for his analyses of the genetic predisposition and molecular mechanisms involved in such common and complex human diseases as diabetes, heart disease and mental illness. He is somewhat less well-known for an Indian cookbook he authored during his graduate student years, "Not Everything We Eat Is Curry." In the Winter of 2001, Aravinda Chakravarti arrived in Baltimore from Cleveland's Case Western Reserve University, handpicked by a blue-ribbon committee as the first head of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins. As the world propels into an era in which genetic knowledge will become crucial to the practice of medicine, Chakravarti talked about how he views his role at the helm of the prestigious institute. Dr. Chakravarti is the Director of the McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine and Professor of Medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Chakravarti's research interests have concentrated on common diseases that arise from a combination of genetic and non-genetic factors. Because these diseases also involve usually tiny alterations in genes that encode proteins within very specific pathways, Chakravarti has investigated the complex interactions among these proteins by developing and applying genomic and computer-based means of finding and identifying these multiple genes. Dr. Chakravarti serves as Principal Investigator for Project 4: Genomic Determinants of Sudden Cardiac Death in the Donald W. Reynolds Cardiovascular Clinical Research Center. Under his leadership, this project will focus on identifying coding and regulatory gene variation that contributes to SCD risk in patients with atherosclerotic disease using novel array technologies. A past associate editor of the American Journal of Human Genetics, Chakravarti is one of the Editors-in-Chief of Genome Research, and serves on the Advisory and Editorial Boards of numerous national and international journals, boards and societies. He is a past member of the NIH National Advisory Council of the National Human Genome Research Institute, Chaired the NIH Subcommittee on the 3rd 5-year Genome Project Plan, and continues to serve on several NIH panels. Chakravarti major contribution in the area of multiple gene disorders or so-called complex diseases was being one of the first few scientists to vocalize the importance of genomics in the study of complex traits which was largely descriptive before that. He also recognized the details of some of these common complex traits and the methods by which they could be identified and understood including the use and importance of studying genetic variation in SNPs (single nucleotide-polymorphisms). Chakravarti goal is simply to change the way we do human genetics, to make human genetics much more real in the clinical realm and to make genetics of the human a much more intrinsic part of both basic research and education. Right after they finished mapping the genome, scientists and the press made a lot of claims about the impact that was going to have on medicine and research. When asked what the reality was Chakravarti replied: ‘In science we like things to be pre or post something-in this case pre or post genome. I actually don't think we are post-genome. I think that this is the beginning of the genome age, merely after we have the sequence. We have yet to show how best to interpret it and use it. The most obvious implication is that we have to change the way we do the science. In the past we haven't considered how a genome's worth of biological information impacts, for instance, the metabolism of glucose or the way in which tumours metastasize. It's one thing to conceptualize it but to be able to do it practically and to make the thinking and the technology widely available... that's a challenge. References:
www.hopkinsmedicine.org/geneticmedicine/Faculty
www.reynolds.jhmi.edu/personnel/pi
www.nature.com/nature/journal
www.hopkinsmedicine.org/hmm/W02/top.htlm
By Padraigin Murphy
Genetics3
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