The Legacy of Oppenheimer - Part 4

Why was it that it was the Department of Energy that initiated and largely funded the Human Genome Project?

When I returned from a tour of the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, I wrote an analysis of the question posed above.??I can’t find that essay, but I’ll try to reconstruct it.?

Let me ask the same question in a different way. The film Oppenheimer profiles physicists during the Century of Physics.?What is the Department of Energy doing pushing the Human Genome Project – a project that involves biology, a field that you would more likely be handled by one of the agencies involved in medicine.?Let me put it a different way. Why are there still so many biologists at the Department of Energy??What’s the connection??

After the war the nuclear program of the United States logically fell to the Department of Energy to administer.?The government began a campaign, “Atoms for Peace,” and devoted resources to the development of “atomic energy.”?(We now say nuclear power.?The term atomic energy has a quaint, almost anachronistic feel.) ?The devotion of the secrets of the atom to peaceful purposes helped to salve some of the qualms that nuclear physicists had after the bombs were dropped.?That’s logical.

But why did the National Labs, sponsored by the Department of Energy, and that’s all of them, have Life Science divisions??After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a major effort became devoted to researching the effects of radiation, especially the effects that radiation had on damaging DNA.?Department of Energy scientists authored the first papers that suggested the need for a Human Genome Project.?And the DOE sponsored the first conferences.

In December 1984, the U.S. Department of Energy cosponsored (with the International Commission for Protection against Environmental Mutagens and Carcinogens) "The Alta Summit" held in the Utah ski resort.?This summit asked if the contemporary DNA analytical techniques could detect mutations or an increase in mutation rates among the survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or in their children.?The conclusion was no, the current methods were not sensitive enough.?But other ideas emerged from both formal and informal discussions that occurred at the meeting – and these discussions later led to genome efforts at the National Labs.?

In March 1986, the DOE Office of Health and Environmental Research sponsored the "Genome Sequencing Workshop" in Santa Fe, New Mexico; the conference’s host was the Life Science Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory (yes, that one). This conference brought together some of the top scientists in the country to assess the feasibility of pursuing a Human Genome Project and to discuss possible approaches.

In between these events?the University of California, Santa Cruz held “The Santa Cruz Workshop” on human genome sequencing in May 1985.?UCSC’s Chancellor at the time, Robert Sinsheimer, had a background in molecular biology so he inspired and sponsored the conference.?On a personal note, when I was a lecturer at UC Santa Cruz in 1990 a film crew showed up on campus to reenact the meeting.?My colleague geneticist Bob Edgar was tasked with handing out papers on camera.

The Human Genome Project is now considered to have been “launched” in 1990, sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (logical) and the Department of Energy (not logical, unless you know the history above).?So Oppenheimer’s laboratory that plays a central role in this summer’s film played a major role in the Human Genome Project.

And the other National Laboratories played their part, as well.?The Department of Energy established the Joint Genome Institute in 1997 to cover their part in the Human Genome Project and located it in Walnut Creek, California. In December, 2019, JGI relocated to the site of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs.?JGI occupies a part of the newly-built Integrative Genomics Building on the campus.?And – you can’t make this up – the Integrative Genomics Building is built on the site of the Bevatron – one of Ernest Lawrence’s particle accelerators.?I attended the conference that celebrated the Joint Genome Institute’s 25th anniversary last year, and as I ate lunch on the benches outside of the new buildings, I stared up at the walls of the old Bevatron building.?And this brings the story full circle.?

The Legacy of Robert Oppenheimer and the structures that he built include contributions to the Life Sciences as well as contributions to physics.?Perhaps this background, knowing the future impact of Los Alamos and the Berkeley labs, will make the film even more interesting. ?

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Jim DeKloe first attended Alfred Nobel Junior High School (Atomic Number 102) and then attended the inaugural class of Ernest O. Lawrence Junior High School (Atomic Number 103).?Glenn T. Seaborg (Atomic Number 106) spoke at the dedication of the school when it opened.?