PROFILE / DUNCAN ODOM
Interview: Evolution, in Academics, Genes, and Cancer Duncan Odom ‘88
BY DAV ID GU LLI VE R
BY TODAY’S PREVAILING OPINIONS ON HIGHER EDUCATION, Duncan Odom’s undergraduate record predicted a bleak career. He chose New College of Florida, not a technical institute or a business school. He changed his major over and over, instead of sticking to a fixed track. It took him six years to graduate, when most students graduate in four. Last year, Odom was awarded the Francis Crick Medal by the Royal Society, the world’s oldest scientific academy, recognizing his ground-breaking work in comparative functional genomics. Indeed, Dr. Odom has become one of the world’s leading scientists in human genetics. He is a faculty member at University of Cambridge and Cancer Research UK, where he runs a million-dollar-a-year laboratory. His team of 10 scientists examines how the DNA molecule’s function controls gene expression. They also apply that work to studying cancer. His success may defy conventional wisdom, but it is no surprise to those who have taught him. “Duncan was “ I was and remain so my best student ever, and grateful that the New he wrote an excellent College undergraduate thesis,” said Suzanne program had the Sherman, associate flexibility to be patient with professor of chemistry at New College. “I always my quest to find my path. knew that Duncan would If I had been forced to go far in science, but his finish pure mathematics or career is impressive hard physics as my degree beyond my imagining.” At New College, Odom in four years, I would have switched AOCs from math dropped out of science to physics to chemistry, due to my lack of ability in taking six years to that level of abstraction." graduate -- “very wellspent time,” Sherman said. “Obviously, this is not fashionable today, but because he spent so much time as an undergraduate, Duncan was able to launch his career with a broad and deep background in the sciences,” she said. He went on to the California Institute of Technology, where he studied with Dr. Jacqueline Barton, a member of the
20 New College of Florida | nimbus
National Academy of Sciences and a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, often called a genius grant. “Duncan was an outstanding student here at Caltech,” Barton said. “He was always bright, engaging, sometimes irreverent, always creative, and wanting to make a difference! And he has!” That creativity, irreverence and brilliance all were on display in his Crick Lecture in London, where in 45 minutes he not only laid out his team’s work in analyzing the mammalian genome, but also worked in a photo from his New College commencement and a joke about his subsequent change of physical appearance. Nimbus spoke with him about his career, at New College and after. Your Crick Lecture explains it well, but can you briefly describe the research you and your team conduct, in layman’s terms. The Odom laboratory’s work seeks to explore and understand the complex and often unpredictable relationships between how changes in our DNA’s regulatory information produce differences in species. For instance, whales and humans have DNA with lots of similarities. So why are they different? It’s because the instructions of how to read the similar bits are different. We were one of a few key laboratories that initially developed the approach now called comparative functional genomics, which means taking experimental snapshots of ‘identical’ cellular information in different species using high throughput sequencing in order to search for consistent patterns of similarity or difference across mammals. How is that work relevant to cancer research? One of the hottest and most dynamic parts of cancer research is how human DNA changes lead to carcinogenesis – and how these changes occur. In other words, the basic questions of how and why our DNA found within particular tissues becomes corrupted to create tumors. The rules followed by cancers share many similarities (and also have important differences) to those that appear to be followed during species evolution. We seek to use normal species evolution as a guide to help us understand cancer evolution. It is that simple.