FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:        NIST 94-29
July 20, 1994

Contact:  Linda Joy           TIGR/NIST ANNOUNCE
          (301) 975-4403      DISTINGUISHED SPEAKERS SERIES
                              TITLED "DNA, GENETICS
                              AND BIOTECHNOLOGY"

     Leaders in genetics and biomedical research will discuss how
revolutions in these fields are impacting science, health care,
business and society in a special lecture series jointly
sponsored by The Institute for Genomic Research and the National
Institute of Standards and Technology.

     The first TIGR/NIST Distinguished Speakers Series will
present academic, government and industry leaders in eight talks
from September 1994 to May 1995.

     The first scheduled speaker in the series is C. Thomas
Caskey on Sept. 9, from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the NIST Green
Auditorium.  Dr. Caskey is director of the Human Genome Center at
Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.  His research
interests include genetic abnormalities and human disease.  He
has published numerous papers on the genetic basis of muscular
dystrophy.

     Other speakers will include:  J. Craig Venter,
president/director, The Institute for Genomic Research; W. French
Anderson, director of Gene Therapy Laboratories, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles; Russell F. Doolittle, professor
of biology and chemistry, University of California, San Diego;
Harold Varmus, director, National Institutes of Health; M.R.C.
Greenwood, associate director for science, White House Office of
Science and Technology Policy; and Mary-Claire King, professor of
genetics and epidemiology, University of California, Berkeley.

     All of the talks will be given in the Green Auditorium of
NIST's Administration Building, Gaithersburg, Md., and are free
and open to the public.  The first such venture for both TIGR and
NIST, the series will present internationally known scientists in
a region with one of the highest concentrations of biotechnology
firms and genetics researchers in the country.

     NIST's co-sponsorship of the Distinguished Speakers Series
reflects its new commitment to focusing resources in the broad
area of DNA technologies in the Biotechnology Division of NIST's
Chemical Science and Technology Laboratory.  In addition to DNA
technologies, which include standards for DNA identification, 
NIST's Biotechnology Division has dedicated research programs in
structural biology, bioprocess engineering and biosensor
technology. 

     In addition, NIST's Advanced Technology Program recently
announced a five-year, $145 million program, "Tools for DNA
Diagnostics," to develop compact, automated DNA analysis
technologies to enable fast, inexpensive detection and diagnosis
of human, animal and plant diseases.

     TIGR, a research institute located in Gaithersburg, Md., was
established in July 1992.  In its first year of operation, TIGR
has become the world's largest facility devoted to large-scale
DNA sequence analysis.  TIGR scientists are identifying more than
12,000 genes per month and anticipate identifying the majority of
human genes by 1995. 

     As a non-regulatory agency of the Commerce Department's
Technology Administration, NIST promotes U.S. economic growth by
working with industry to develop and apply technology,
measurements and standards.

     For more information on the Distinguished Speakers Series,
contact Damar Hawkins, TIGR, at (301) 869-9056. 

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==================================================================

           TIGR/NIST Distinguished Speaker Series Schedule


All talks are from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the NIST Green Auditorium
(main entrance is at Clopper Road and Bureau Drive, exit 10 from
I-270 N, exit 11a from I-270 S), Gaithersburg, Md., and are
followed by a reception. 

Sept. 9, 1994
C. Thomas Caskey
Chairman, Department of Molecular and Human Genetics, Baylor
College of Medicine

Dr. Caskey is director of the Human Genome Center at Baylor
College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.  His research interests
include genetic abnormalities and human disease.  He has
published numerous papers on the genetic basis of muscular
dystrophy. 

Oct. 31, 1994
J. Craig Venter
President/Director, The Institute for Genomic Research

Dr. Venter is the founding president and director of The
Institute for Genomic Research in Gaithersburg, Md.  As chief of
the section on Receptor Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke at the
National Institutes of Health from 1984 to 1992, Dr. Venter
pioneered the expressed sequence tag (EST) strategy as a new
model for rapid gene discovery. 

Nov. 28, 1994
W. French Anderson
Director, Gene Therapy Laboratories, University of Southern
California, Los Angeles

Dr. Anderson trained at Harvard Medical School and Boston
Children's Hospital and spent 27 years at the National Heart,
Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health
doing research in mammalian gene expression, gene transfer
technology and gene therapy.  In 1990 Dr. Anderson performed the
first clinical trial of human gene therapy.  A 4-year-old girl
suffering from a rare inherited immune-system disorder, was
treated at the National Institutes of Health by genetically
altering her white blood cells to produce the missing adenosine
deaminase (ADA) enzyme.  Several months later, a second child
with the same disorder was treated similarly.  Today, both
children are doing well and leading relatively normal lives. 
Since the fall of 1992 Dr. Anderson has been at the University of
Southern California School of Medicine, developing advanced gene
therapy delivery systems.







Jan. 12, 1995
Russell F. Doolittle
Professor of Biology and Chemistry, University of California, 
San Diego

Dr. Doolittle is the author of numerous articles in the areas of
protein chemistry and biochemical evolution.  His major research
interests are protein structure and evolution, synthetic peptides
and computer approaches to protein chemistry and biology.  He
serves on the boards of several biochemical journals and has
served on various advisory committees at the National Institutes
of Health, American Red Cross, Protein Identification Resource,
GenBank and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.

Feb. 16, 1995
Harold Varmus
Director, National Institutes of Health

Dr. Varmus was most recently a professor of microbiology,
biochemistry and biophysics, and the American Cancer Society
Professor of Molecular Virology at the University of California,
San Francisco.  He is an internationally recognized authority on
retroviruses and the genetic basis of cancer.  Dr. Varmus and his
UCSF colleague, J. Michael Bishop, shared a Nobel Prize in
Physiology of Medicine in 1989 for demonstrating that cancer
genes can arise from normal cellular genes. 

March 23, 1995
M.R.C. Greenwood
Associate Director for Science, White House Office of Science and
Technology Policy

Prior to serving in the White House, Dr. Greenwood was dean of
Graduate Studies at the University of California at Davis.  She
was also a professor in the Departments of Nutrition and Internal
Medicine.  Her research interests are in developmental cell
biology, genetics, physiology and nutrition.  Her work over the
past 25 years, focusing on the genetic causes of obesity, is
recognized worldwide.

April
[TBA]

May 18, 1995
Mary-Claire King
Professor of Genetics and Epidemiology, University of California,
Berkeley

Dr. King is widely recognized for her research on a genetic cause
for breast cancer, a subject on which she has published numerous
papers.  Her principal research interests include genetic
analysis of complex human diseases and characterization of human
genetic diversity.  In addition to breast cancer, Dr. King has
studied genetic roles in lupus erythematosus and inherited
deafness.