Challenges and Successes of Molecular Biology over the Past 30 Years

If I should give an “age” to the Molecular Biology Era, I would have to go back more than 30 years ago when researchers succeeded in cloning genes, sequencing them one at the time and expressing them in different organisms. From that time on, the pace of research escalated enormously and led to the sequencing of the genomes of several organisms in the late ‛90s and to the landmark achievement of sequencing the complete human genome in 2003. All these accomplishments have been translated into real applications in biomedicine, for example in prognosis of diseases and in more targeted therapeutic treatments. The application of Molecular Biology to Environmental Sciences is more recent partly due to more complex problems; however the benefits that such an approach will bring are already clear. The seminar will present successes, challenges and outlook of Molecular Biology starting from Life Sciences and ending in the relatively new field of Molecular Ecology.I will illustrate some key steps of this “evolution” with some examples from my own career,starting as an undergraduate student painstakingly sequencing a human gene promoter, one base at the time to the current transcriptome analysis of the marine diatom, Thalassosira pseudonana, an alga.