Thursday, October 29, 1998
Genetics department gets new home
GENETICS: Completed building lets researchers interact to forge
path to future of modern medicine
By Matt Grace
Daily Bruin Contributor
Inside the brick-red Gonda (Goldschmied) Neuroscience and
Genetics Research Center  a new face on the row of medical
buildings along Westwood  the future of modern medicine is
moving in.
The center will be the new home for the department of human
genetics and part of the Brain Research Institute. It promises to
lead UCLA into the forefront of genetics, a field of science that
will soon become a part of everyday health care.
"I think the center of human genetics has already made UCLA a
major player in the scene of human genetics," said Gerald Levey,
dean of the UCLA Medical School. "And I don’t think one could be a
major research institution without having a world-class genetics
program."
"It will be critical for medicine of the 21st century to have
the knowledge of what (genes) do and what happens if a gene is
mutated or deleted, and what role it plays on human disease," Levey
said.
This knowledge will be the foundation behind preventing diseases
from occurring, rather than waiting to treat a disease in response
to symptoms.
So once UCLA received the $45 million donation from the Gonda
family, it had the resources to create a center that will soon be
at the forefront of international genetics research  an
endeavor which requires an internationally renowned scientist.
Leena Peltonen, an expert in the genetics of human diseases, was
wooed away from the University of Helsinki in Finland after UCLA
offered the chance to lead their new department into the 21st
century.
"Genetics is essentially the future of medicine," Peltonen said.
With the state-of-the-art laboratories and a department filled with
talented researchers, she couldn’t resist.
"That’s a major temptation and challenge  that you can
create something new," Peltonen said, who now holds the chair of
the new department of human genetics.
At UCLA, neuroscience is the single biggest scholarly
discipline, drawing faculty from the school of dentistry, the
school of engineering, the school of medicine and the College of
Letters & Science.
The Gonda family donation has enabled UCLA to build the center
and establish a department of genetics which includes both the
Brain Research Institute and department of genetics, said Allan
Tobin, director of BRI.
Although not everyone within the department of human genetics
will be housed in the new building, the center will allow
scientists to slide from discipline to discipline.
Susan Smalley, a human geneticist and professor of psychiatry
and biobehavioral sciences, for one, studies behavioral disorders
that begin in childhood, such as autism and attention-deficit
hyperactivity disorder, on a genetic level.
The center will give her "the molecular tools to uncover
susceptible genes for complex traits, such as human behavior.
Understanding of complex behavior is something we can do now
because of the Human Genome Project," she said.
"It will enable us to uncover all the genes that contribute to
behavior."
The design of the building itself also promotes interaction.
There are open labs, "interactive zones" and a cafe available for
planned and unplanned meetings  opportunities for geneticists
and neuroscientists to have meaningful discussions and play with
new ideas.
"The virtue of this building is its interactiveness," Tobin
said. "We are concentrating our efforts to foster interaction on
three dimensions," and bringing together "perspectives from people
who are coming at neuroscience at different angles."
The center will focus on the genetic composition of brain
function and diseases; learning and memory on a cellular and
molecular level; and how genetics and cell biology shape the these
abilities.
"The main thing that we look forward to being able to do is
examine the patterns of inheritance and expression, not just for a
few genes, but for thousands of genes at a time," Tobin said.
"We think that it will allow us to understand cellular changes
in learning and memory on the one hand" Tobin said, "and disease
pathology on the other."
"It will have an impact on the way we teach genetics and the way
we do research."
PATIL ARMENIAN
Dr. Leena Peltonen is the new director of the UCLA human
genetics program.
Comments, feedback, problems?
© 1998 ASUCLA Communications Board[Home]