Directing the NHGRI : Dr. Eric Green

In this episode, I co-hosted Dr. Eric Green, Director of the NHGRI with Parth and Chinmay, the co-hosts of Biocast. He is the third NHGRI director, having been appointed by NIH director Dr. Francis Collins in 2009. In this episode, we talked about mentorship, baseball, and what it’s like to head an institute of the NIH.

Transcription

Transcribed by Micah Hysong (he/him)

JP Flores (he/him): The first discussion that I have for you Eric is, I want you to tell us about who you are, where you grew up, how you wound up in science. So I know that you’re a physician scientist who went to Washington University in Saint Louis. But that’s really all I was able to scrape off the Internet. So can you fill in the blanks for me and tell me more about you. Absolutely. So for starters, I was born and raised in Saint Louis.

Eric Green: Absolutely. So for starters, I was born and raised in Saint Louis. I was born into a science family. My father was actually a very prominent virologist, and so from a very young age, really, literally starting at maybe 6 or 7 years old, I would go into work with him and hang out in his lab and play with things, and just sort of be exposed to the life of a researcher. I mean, he was also a workaholic. So I probably have an incredible work ethic, but I got that from him. So that’s the first aspect of it. I really was a Midwest kid my whole life. Born and raised and went all the way through high school, ended up staying in the Midwest, going to University of Wisconsin, as an undergraduate. I was the youngest of 3 and my 2 older siblings definitely followed a medical science path. My older brother, 6 years older, went Md. Phd. My sister, 3 years older when medical degree. I actually wasn’t sure I was gonna go into science when I was a university Wisconsin. I was really toying with the idea of going to law school. I did have a calling to me, you know, maybe medical school even looked at Mdjd program. So I looked at the whole group. But I did get the experience early on starting to work in a lab, just a fundamental cell biology biochemistry lab. And I just got hooked. And I just really saw that as the path forward, I decided to be indecisive. And so I decided to go. Md, Phd, because it really avoids making those decisions. You say I love science, I love research, but I also like being a clinician. The idea of it.And so I decided to go, and get a MD. Phd. I ended up the best program I got into was back in my hometown of St. Louis, and so my parents were delighted that I moved back home to St. Louis, and then I was in St. Louis, a long time 13 years, because I finished my Md. Phd. Program. And then I did a residency in clinical pathology and then got involved in genomics in the Human Genome Project. I’m sure we’re going to get there, and then ended up staying there for faculty position, and the only thing that dislodged me from the Midwest, which happened literally 29 and a third years ago was this guy Francis Collins. I followed him because he was gonna take over at what was then the National Center for Human Genome Research, and he had tried to recruit me to University of Michigan when I just came up a little short, decided to stay at Wash University, but when I heard he was going to nih sort of had me right away and I said, All right, I’m with you. So 29 years ago, I came to Bethesda, Maryland, and settled here. I was already married at the time, but then had kids and have been here, made a career at being at nih. So in a nutshell, that’s the story. I am a physician, scientist. I keep a medical license alive, but I don’t practice at all, and I probably would have been more involved clinically. I mean, I was. I decided to get a Residency, you know you not even everybody with an Md. Phd. goes and does a Residency. Some do straight post-docs. I wanted the Residency. I was credentialed, you know I felt very good having a role as a physician but I got hooked in genomics, got involved in the Genome Project, and that rocket ship just sort of took me on a different trajectory. And I was. It was a very opportunistic trajectory. I didn’t know I was going to get involved in genomics. I didn’t know I was gonna get involved in the Genome project, but once I sort of got on that path and then got recruited to Nih, and have assumed many leadership roles. I’ve let my active clinical practice now that I have our practice, but I don’t really practice medicine any serious way now. However, as a physician scientist, it really has been very beneficial to my leadership role, especially in the last, you know, 15 years, as there’s been a lot of attention paid to applying genomics to medicine. Having walked the walk of going to medical school, I feel very comfortable leading Nih’s efforts and thinking about clinical applications of genomics.

Parth Shirolkar: Yeah, that’s wonderful. I actually wanted to get into that a little bit. Now you’re the director of the nhgri. So as the director, give us a day in the life. Like you said, you’re very good, very like routinely answering emails like, when Jp sent you an email you answered in like 3 minutes, and we were all freaking out in our little group chat of ours.So yeah, how is it?

Eric Green: First lets deal with your email because it says a lot about me and maybe it says a lot about my character. I, you know, I’m easy. I mean the younger you are the easier I am. You know, if some big shot, you know, prominent person says, will you do a. I’ll think about it. You get a middle school, or a high school, or a college, or you know I mean any trainee. I almost never let those emails sit around very long. They usually get answered within minutes, because 1 it keeps me young. But 2. I know fun, you know, and so you know I am. I am hard to get if you’re my peer, but if you’re junior young, you know, and it’s really funny, because graduate students, you know, will invite me to come be the graduate student sponsored speaker and I’ll instantly say. Yes, I said, we never thought in a million years you were gonna say, yes, I said you have no idea how easy it is to get me to say yes. In fact, the secret is, you should just whether you’re a trainee or not, you just lie and say you’re a student, and then I’ll say, Yeah, your experience is a very, very typical. And it’s by the way, if it’s also something that I can’t help with, I need advice about such and such. Or how do I apply to this. I’m also very good about immediately forwarding that to somebody on my staff and make sure. So I’m very, not. Everybody’s that way. But I am, I’m very, very, very, very accommodating, especially to students at all levels.

22 00:06:19.290 –> 00:06:43.659 JP Flores (he/him): So funny. Because, you know, part, then, they just started their podcast and we kind of just joined forces because they’re like we’re we’re having trouble getting people. Blah blah, blah, blah. And I was like, alright. Let’s let’s try and do this together. Let’s see what happens. And they were so nervous before this interview. And you saying, that is unreal like It’s so funny hearing from the director of that you are still willing to answer emails.

Eric Green: All I could say is, any of the 3 of you who are in any way nervous that just makes me chuckle, cause there’s nothing you should be nervous about. I’m having more fun doing this than you are. First off you started this by saying, What’s the day in the life of an Nhgri director? The first thing is this is the highlight. There’s nothing else I’ve done that really is as much fun as this. I actually I started at 7’clock this morning on a Zoom Meeting with a very good friend of mine in the Uk. Strategizing about some really hard scientific problems. I then spent 2 hours in a meeting with all the Institute directors led by our new Nih director dealing with really hard problems and everything else I’ve done today has just been hard problems. This is hot. Okay, just so you’re like nothing service about it. But that’s a typical life of the day. But really, to answer your question more accurately, there is no typical. I mean the first thing I would say is, and I get asked this question a lot, It really is not typical. I mean, the only thing that’s the only thing that’s typical is that if it’s a normal day and we’re just coming off the holidays. Those were not normal. If it’s a normal day, the only thing that’s predictable is, I’m just gonna get a ton of emails. I mean, it’s just constant. It’s, you know, 2 to 300 a day kind of a thing, and not that there’s 2 to 300 important emails. Trust me, there’s not probably only about 30 important ones but or, you know, maybe 50, but it’s that’s the only consistency. And it even. And part of the reason why it’s so inconsistent is I’m just called on to do so many different things, you know, on the one hand, I could be traveling that could create a whole other set of circumstances, or I could be about to travel which could be really crazy, or I’m just back from travel, and then a whole bunch of things are waiting for me. And so, you know, some days my schedule looks like a brick wall where there’s not even a bathroom break, and some days it just opens up because I haven’t traveled for a couple of weeks, or you know, there’s so it really varies. the other thing about. And also it depends on whether I have to go give talks, or if I’m sharing meetings. The other thing about a director that I think is I definitely experience this a lot is I sort of call it the whiplash factor is that probably more than any other thing I’ve ever done in my life, as I’ve climbed in various leadership positions is how facile you have to be a flexible, nimble cause you could go from one meeting to the next and the everything changes, you know. I mean, this is typical right? Even this meeting, you know, I mean the last meeting I was just in I was dealing with horrifically difficult budget issues of you know how we’re gonna fix this problem. We have these budget shortfalls. We have a, you know, a situation right now where the budget may not be good. I mean, just heartbreaking hard decisions. And then I have to switch gears and think about talking to a podcast being created by some very young, energetic people, you know. And then, you know, not today. But you know, the next meeting I could have could be with, you know, a patient group dealing with some very devastating genetic disorders, and the next thing might be I might be talking to the New York Times, you know, or I might be asked about a really hard problem, or I might, you know. So it’s this, you could really just go from meeting to meeting where you have to change so many things in your brain very quickly. So you just get super nimble and and you know, by the way, the other thing about my existence which is indicative even of this podcast is I as a director, you have to fly at different altitudes very quickly. So I mean, right now, I’m probably gonna fly at a pretty high altitude, right? Because I’m talking to a very general audience. But I could have just as easily, or you know, I don’t happen to, but it would be surprising I’d have a 5’clock meeting. It could be with a world’s expert about something, or could be with one of my grantees or one of my scientists in my Institute. We could be dealing with the nitty gritty of chromatin structure Jp. In the weeds on chromatin. And you know, that’s at like a 1,000 level. But most of this podcast are probably going to be flying at about 30,000 feet. So it’s this constant altitude change that you get really good at. And then and then the only other thing I’d say about my day a typical day is, I have to be efficient. And one of the things that people sometimes would note with me. And I think the others who survived these kind of jobs is, some people are really good at if given 5 min, I will find 5 min of really good work to do, and other people you give them 5 min they could barely get their engine warmed up. Gotta be good at 5 min because you gotta grab it and go for it, because if I couldn’t do that, I would end my day with 200 emails in my inbox. So part of why I responded to your email quickly, my goal every day is to get my impact down as small as possible because if not, I will just drown in it. And so a lot of this is, you know, either email or phone calls or or follow ups. I mean, it’s just kind of you gotta be knocking things off your to do list, because otherwise, you know, and probably one of the best things I’m really, really, really good at is delegating. I couldn’t possibly do my job if I didn’t have an incredible staff around me. You know there’s just you’ve gotten introduced to some of my communication staff. But trust me, I’ve got, you know, a bench of 30, 40, 50 people of different parts the Institute that I’m constantly delegating to. And I know how to forward emails like the best of them, with instruction like, fix it. Resolve this. Help this person. I don’t even give long, winded explanations. They just know what they need to do, and their job is to help me run the Institute, and without a terrific support staff around me and a team around me. I’d be horrifically inefficient, and I’d be very unproductive. So that’s part of it. And so that means also to answer your question is, I’m coordinating a lot of people who are doing lots on my behalf which means you have to also foster the team, keep people happy, surround yourself by good people, and make sure that you know you’re you’re you’re being a good mentor to them and a good supervisor.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. And we’re definitely gonna talk about mentorship. And we’ll get to the Human Genome project and Francis Collins in a little bit. But before I move on, and before I forget, I have to ask. You know I’m a baseball guy. I’m a Diehard Dodgers Fan.

Eric Green: Well, you know, that’s okay. I mean, you know you. You don’t have. You’re not rooting for the best team in the You know. They’re not shoddy either. But okay, I respect any baseball fan. Just you pick the wrong team.

JP Flores (he/him): So are you a cardinals fan?

Eric Green: Oh yeah.

JP Flores (he/him): The season that they just had. You had the best corners and in-fielders in the country. Eric Green: But we had no pitching. But I’m doing this podcast from my home but I wish I was in my office because I would turn off the blurry background and you would see I have a couch in my office which I refer to as my shrine. Nobody sits on my couch because it has about 7 or 8 pieces of cardinals, St. Louis cardinals, paraphernalia. It has baseball cap, it has a standal jersey. It has a it has a T-shirt. You’d love this T-shirt. I’m a sucker for really good things, so of course some smart person, some smart company figured this out by grabbing information about me, sent me a push email. And I basically have a picture. And it’s like a silhouette of Maryland, and then it has the cardinal insignia, and it says, Listen to this cause it triangulates the 3 key things with me. Maryland, genomics and cardinal baseball. It says they I may in Maryland, but I have cardinal baseball in my DNA. That is just it all. So what do I do? I give them 25 bucks, so they send me a T-shirt which prominently featured. So that’s my cardinal shrine is in my office.

50 00:15:02.650 –> 00:15:29.140 JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, that’s awesome. Well, you talked about amazing mentorship and the mentorship you’ve received from Francis Collins and and I, for one, can also attest to that. So I hosted him for an episode on my podcast from where it stem, and he, like yourself, was pretty quick to reply, accept the invitation. We did the episode. I continued to bother him, and he ended up watching my practice candidacy exam. He just wrote me a letter of recommendation for the hhmi Gillian fellowship. I’m actually headed to Bethesda in a week or so. I’m doing an internship with lyric Jorgenson in the office of science policy.

Eric Green: You should try to stop by and say, Hello.

JP Flores (he/him): Oh, most definitely, yeah, most definitely, but yeah, can you just tell us about your relationship with Francis. And then, after that, talk to us about the importance of mentorship.

Eric Green: So so well, I actually it’s great that you give me, Francis, as an example. I have a lot to say about mentorship and I have a lot to say about role models, and I think they’re interrelated. And I mean Francis is a rock star. He is a superhuman. I don’t think he’s mortal. I regard him as one of my best friends, and I regard him as one of the the shiny lights of mentorship and accomplishment. By the way, I say all of that, and I also will immediately say you always need to be a little bit careful on overly idolizing your role models. Point of view of saying I must be like him or her, otherwise I won’t be successful, because then you’ll always feel like you’re an imposter, so I’m the first to say that he is not mortal. My post, Doc Mentor Maynard Olson, is not mortal. And and I’ll give those just as 2 examples. There’s other non mortals, but those are 2 of my biggest professional influences on my life that I am happy to say they are better, smarter, more accomplished than me. I am thrilled that they have high regard for me, and I’m thrilled that they are proud of me. But I they you know they’re just super stars. I mean. It’s incredible. Now I will immediately tell you to having just said all those incredible things about them. One of the things I always like to tell trainees is you could be enamored with your mentor, and you could say, This person is incredible, and this person is so accomplished, and if only I could be that person. I would also always encourage people to not feel that they need to say that everything that person does is perfect. and that one of the best things of mentorship is recognizing who are your role models and who are your anti role models, or what are your role model characteristics? And what are your anti role model characteristics, and it could be in the same person. And so and I’ll give both of them as examples. Francis Collins. I mean, he’s incredible and I you know I have followed in many aspects of his footsteps, but I do things very differently, and I’d be the first to say I’m better at this than he is, and but he’s better than me and 25 other things. Yeah, that’s right. And even when I took over as a director of the Institute. I mean, there were several things I started to do differently and I would check in with him. He said, Yeah, you do it your way. I you know you are much more organized. You’re much more this. He immediately starts telling me things that you know I’m better than him in certain areas, he says, play to your strengths. Don’t replicate what I did, and and I absolutely believe in that. And the same with Maynard Olson, I mean, he and I are incredibly different. But he taught me a lot of things. I emulate a lot of things, but I also do things very, very differently like, answer email for starters. So you know, some people are just, you know, sort of have their they have to bring your personality traits, your strengths to the position. So there is nothing wrong with taking the role model, the best mentor you have, and it’s stratifying them. And you don’t have to do everything the way they do it. You could say, you know, you know, Francis Collins was never very good at designing space as an example. I am really good at designing space. He would never think about putting time in to think about how to renovate an office suite to make employees happy. I get into that stuff. And so but you know, that’s okay. He’s so much more brilliant than me. That’s good. He’d accomplishes other things. So I and I really think sometimes people get role models, they get mentors, and then they get discouraged in themselves because they say I can never be that good. You don’t have to be that person. Be yourself. Take the pluses and take the minuses. Maybe be better by being better at the areas where you see weaknesses in others, and you gotta be yourself and I also think, surround yourself, you don’t ever go with one mentor. Surround yourself with multiple mentors. Every career decision you should make you should get advice from multiple people, because advice is free and you can ignore it. And I always say whether you’re picking the medical school or graduate school, or you’re deciding Md Phd. You’re deciding whether to go off to some other program, you know. Don’t just ask one or 2 people. You’re allowed to weight it, you know. You could decide who you’re going to listen to more than others. You get a lot of opinions and get a lot of, because you can ignore it. And I think the synthesis of hearing people’s reasoning really is very helpful. So, and and I also think that I think sometimes. You know, some people are not very good mentors, and then just try to recognize that and then find good. There are enough good mentors in this world, and I you’ve gotta be persistent. And if you don’t feel you’re getting good mentoring from the person that you think supposed to give it to you. Just keep asking. Gotta ask others.

JP Flores (he/him): Yep. Period.

73 Chinmay Singh: Yeah, there’s one word specifically that you mentioned when you said, don’t idolize your mentors too much. And that word was imposter, and you might have already answered this already, but, like have you ever dealt with imposter syndrome? And if so, how and what advice would you have for other people also suffering from imposter syndrome?

Eric Green: Yeah, no, I deal with this all the time, and trying to to mentor others who, I think, and I certainly I mean, first of all, anybody who sort of is has done anything significant professionally, or anybody’s ascended in leadership roles if they say they never felt they had imposter syndrome they’re just not telling the truth, you know. I just think we cope with it in different ways. You know one of the ways I know that I cope with it is, I am the very first person to say there is no way I could do this job alone. I’ve been saying that for like the last 10 jobs. I mean, there’s just no way I could do it alone. And if you actually look at what our responsible, you know, so I would absolutely instantly feel like an imposter. If you told me I needed to run an Nih Institute with 660 million dollars of taxpayer money and I had to do it effectively and legally, and I had to have 650 people, and that I mean, you must be kidding me. What? What in my medical or graduate training prepared me for financial management, or personnel management or organizational management or administrative management, I mean, and in fact, you almost feel that way when you’re just running your little lab of 4 or 5 people when you’re young. It’s like I didn’t know how to run a lab. I mean, I only know how to write a thesis. So you one of the ways I deal with it is I part my ego at the door. I just say I can’t do any of this stuff alone. I have to completely rely on an incredible budget team. An incredible management team, an incredible personnel team, critical communications team, a policy team and education just keep going down. And so I think that’s one of it is, I’m I’m happy to say I don’t know, and I’m happy to say I yield to others, and I’m happy to admit I’m ignorant. But no, there’s no question and lots of people feel this along the way and you know I do think you know my case. Since you keep bringing up Francis, you know. I probably deal with imposter syndrome through humor. I mean, deal with everything through humor, as you can quickly tell. But I mean it was a little overwhelming, I mean Francis Collins. When I took over the Institute as though, by the way, I was the third director of the National Human Genome Research Institute. The first one was James Watson who, you know, discovered the double helical structure of DNA, or at least did it with Rosalind Franklin and etcetera. You know that story. We’ll leave that alone. But you know at least want to know about okay. And then Francis Collins, this super Rock Star, once in a multi-generation physician, scientist, and then me, I mean, who am I mean? This is nuts. I can’t follow these 2 people. I had imposter syndrome from day one. So I used to for the first 2 years of being an Institute director. I used to show this stock photo of, you know, adult shoes and a little baby’s foot in the shoe, and I said, I’ve got such big shoes to fill. My foot will never be big enough to fill in the consummate example of imposter syndrome. So you know. But, on the other hand you know, it’s like it’s like any other that you know you. You feel it so often. By the way, you know, I think it’s very common. I talk to a lot of graduate students, and I talk to a lot of medical students, and they always say, Oh, God, I mean I can’t be a physician. I can’t be a doctor. I can’t be a you know a Phd. I can’t be a PI. Yes, you canIt’s just hard to imagine it, and you just take it a step at a time. And also you also realize, by the way, this will lead together what we were just talking about. The other thing. I always like to tell people about mentorship is I think some people make the mistake to believe that mentorship is while you’re a trainee, and once you’re no longer a trainee you know, having a mentor. That would be, that would be, you know, a sign of weakness, or expressing the view of I can’t do this. That would be an expression of weakness. Mentorship is a lifelong need. I mean, I still get mentorship from Francis Collins and and and Maynard Olson, and I give you a list of about 10 or 20 people I get mentorship. You would think I should be. I’m a big boy now. I should be able to not require no way. I regularly talk to dozens of colleagues where I say, I’m really, you know, it’s actually why I really get along extremely well with my advisors. We have a lot of formal advisory groups, and I’m buddies with so many of them, because they help me. They’re all my mentor because I throw off hard problems like I can’t solve all this. I need to hear you talk through it with me. So Mentorship is a lifelong need. And even when you’re in your sixties, and even if you’re an Institute director, you need that. And, by the way, I will also tell you that you know th what goes around comes around. And this is, you guys are too young. But I mean your parents will tell you one day you’ll you know your parents are your, but later you’ll be your parents, parents as they get older they’ll need your help. I don’t think I’m off script by saying, you know Francis Collins now comes to me for some advice, so he probably say I mean, I don’t know if you call that mentorship, but he’s got decisions to make, and so he’ll come to me sometimes because I really want your advice about saying, Well, that’s a form of him pursuing, you know, getting lifelong mentorship. Now, just may be people that he used to mentor. That’s okay. Circle of life and all it all’s giving back, etc., etc. It’s fine.

Chinmay Singh: Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think that’s probably the best advice I’ve heard on imposter syndrome.

Eric Green: Yeah, it’s not a sign a weakness to ask for advice at any age.

Parth Shirolkar: Absolutely. So we’ve mentioned now a lot of your like involvement with Francis Collins. I wanted to transfer a little over into the research world side of that. So like you’ve probably been asked a ton about the Human Genome Project, and I know you were on a podcast in, I think, April of 2022. I think it was DNA today where you elaborated on a lot of that information. So I wanted to ask a little bit more about what your research looked like after the Human Genome Project, and even to this day, like what pressing questions were, and are you like personally interested in now? And what’s happening or needs to happen to get these questions answered?

Eric Green: Yeah. Well, first of all, let me I have to set the record straight. So you’re clear, I decided, and we could unpack this if you want as a separate line of questions. I decided about 14 years ago to stop running my own research lab. So I don’t do active research anymore. Now, I as an institute director at Nhgri, because we run a lot of big consortium. We do a lot of big science that as the Nhgri director I’m involved in a lot of these big projects, and that sort of has become my new research world, where I’m involved more at a higher level of over. Instead of running my own lab. I’m running. I’m involved in developing, designing, and envisioning and then executing on some big projects and big consortium through my institute. But I don’t run my own research lab, but I did for many years up until about 14 years ago. So to answer your question. So you know I was involved in the Genome project, started when I was a postdoc and a resident, and then I when I finished it I was, you know, when the Genome Project was over I was already in a major leadership role, but I was a beginning to end participant of the Human Genome Project. Your question, which was a really good one, was, Well, what else did you do with your career? Besides working on the Genome project. The Geno project ended in 2003 and and and it was a very a conscious decision of how was I gonna build on my part of my lab that was involved in the Human Genome Project which, by the way, some people who are advising me, who I didn’t listen to at a younger age, never thought I could build a career in research beyond the Human Genome Project. Remember? Well, you don’t remember. You are all too young. Some people were against the Genome Project. Some people thought it was not for physician scientists, or even for Phds at the extreme some critics of the Human Genome Project said, this is not for scientists. The Human Genome Project should be done by prisoners because it’s not intellectual. It’s horrible. It’s completely wrong and misguided. But when they told me you’d never build a successful independent research career if you worked on the Human Genome Project, they didn’t give me credit enough to think that I could figure out ways of splintering out really important and opportunistic things to do beyond the Genome Project, which is what I did. And so the 2 things I did to answer your question very directly was: Number One: I got very involved, you know. All the focus of the Human Genome Project was on the human genome, and then a small number of model organisms, like the mouse and Fruit fly and nematode, worm and yeast. And I was one of the first to get heavily involved in doing comparative genomics of other vertebrates. In particular, because I started to utilize some of the things that I had developed within the Human Genome Project to more efficiently be able to grab corresponding parts of the genome that I was studying, and grab it in like 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, other vertebrates sequencing those regions. And now, all of a sudden you have the same page out of evolution’s notebook from like 30 vertebrates or 12 primates. And that started this incredible, exciting opportunities of comparative genomics, which, of course, later, when cheap sequencing got cheap, led to well, let’s just sequence the genomes of lots and lots of animals. But I was getting early glimpses of what that was gonna look like. So I got a lot of credit for doing some pioneering work, of at least getting some early data to sort of predict and start getting computational methods developed. For where we live now, which is lots of cold, genome sequences from lots of organisms. So that was one avenue, the other avenue, which played right into why Francis Collins convinced me to come to Nih was as a physician, scientist I was very interested in in human genetic diseases, and I wanted to particularly try to go after without lots of people we’re doing which, you know, can we now find the disease genes, especially for rare diseases more efficiently having the tools of the Genome project available to us. So I focused on the region of the genome that I was studying for the Human Genome Project, and I had lots of chances to get collaborators who happen to be studying the disease where their gene was found to be located on chromosome 7. And I was uniquely poised. So I rattled off over the period about, you know, 6, 7 years, about 3 or 4 major human disease, gene discoveries, and really was quite gratifying to see me carry it all the way to the point of finding the gene characterizing it and understanding the disease to a greater extent. So those were some of the major tracks that I extended beyond the Genome Project.

Parth Shirolkar: Yeah, a bit of a follow up question to that. Like, if you were doing research like right now, like, what are the questions that you find are the most interesting? And what would you like see yourself doing right now?

Eric Green: Yeah, that’s a great question. There’s no, if I had a 20 year younger version of me, yeah, I would probably go full circle back to my clinical groups in my clinical roots would be in laboratory medicine otherwise known as clinical pathology, because I really do believe that now, with the ability to sequence, a human genome for less than a thousand dollars we’re going to be doing this clinically all the time. I think it would be wonderful to be a pathologist these days. I tell lots of people in pathology this all the time, because I really do believe we are gonna be, that that level of expertise, combining pathology and genomics at a time where you really can have genomic information be mainstream for use in medicine would require expert. So I would love to do everything I can to facilitate that being mainstream. So I think my research would be very much at the genomic medicine implementation. You know the truth of the matter is in some ways you could I live vicariously. My role now is, I live vicariously through others. So if you see some of the big initiatives we done at the Institute, especially cause, especially in the genomic medicine spaces, because I wish I could be doing this, but if I can’t be doing it, at least I could throw some money at it to make sure it gets done. And so, you know, look at our intramural program. Several years ago we started a whole precision health Research Center, and you know was, it’s all about how to extrapolate genomic data, electronic health record data with patient do discovery and better management and all sorts of predictive stuff. That’s that’s where I position, you know, and it involves a lot of data science which I have no credentials in. But I go get my credentials that that’s where you know if that’s where I would definitely put myself, that’s the playground.

JP Flores (he/him): Hire me. No I’m just kidding.

Chinmay Singh: So I guess kind of going off the Human Genome Project and your experience with that. I’m not sure if you worked with him specifically. But you mentioned obviously you were an instrumental figure in the project, but also Dr. Jay Craig venter. I just finished my course in molecular genetics as an undergraduate, and they mentioned him a lot. So do you ever work with him specifically like, can you talk about the collaboration between the Nih and Celera genomics, andlike what was working with Craig like.

Eric Green: Well, that’s why I call it a collaboration. It was a complicated social dynamic. So I know Craig well. I dealt with them a lot during the Genome project. Not so much more recently. I always like to point out. You know, the Human Genome Project was a scientific story, but it was also a human drama story. It was high stakes. It was high egos and it certainly had a, you know someday there’ll be a really good movie made on this, or there’ll be a movie. I don’t know how good it will be. But there’ll be a Mini series or a Netflix, or there’ll be something. But you know it’s complicated, you know, and I one of the things I think, to set up what I’m about to say, I should really point out is, I think sometimes people believe the Human Genome Project started with a very clear path, a very clear guide, a blueprint in a structure book, whatever you want to call it, of how we were gonna over the course of 13 to 15 years, figure out, and then execute on sequence to the human genome, and that it was just a matter of following the the path that was already laid out. That is absolutely not what happened. We had no idea how we were gonna map or sequence the human genome when the gun went off on October first of 1990. We simply had no idea, we had a goal. We had some money to start, and we did you know there wasn’t even a functional Internet to a large extent. I mean, it just didn’t exist, you know. You just have no idea how cursory everything was and there was a lot of misconceptions about this was gonna happen. So it was absolutely a build the airplane as you’re flying, and that is very precarious, and so, and then the stakes were high, and it was hard and and and people were people. And so this led to a set of circumstances where Craig was, and I’ll try to be very objective. Here, you know, was was that first involved in the Genome project, but he has very he’s brilliant, incredibly successful. So let me first point that out. But he’s also very opportunistic, and he’s very creative and he very entrepreneurial. When when he did not like, he was participating in the Genome project, he had lots of disagreements about how it should be done, and he, an opportunity came in front of him to basically do it his way, but do it in the private sector, by the company that basically, it just created these more efficient ways of sequencing DNA with new machines. And so that set up a competition The thing that’s really important to appreciate is what they were doing at Solara Genomics was selling subscriptions to getting access to their data, which the most fundamental core value of those of us participating in the Human Genome Project was the value of unfettered access to all data being so you couldn’t of had a more value clash between the 2. No, of course, this all played out in the press, and it played out in the in in scientific theater with the 2 major protagonists. You know you had Francis Collins leading the International Human Genome Project efforts. You had Craig Venter, and it was, you know, these Titans and lots of drama, and lots of stories and lots of this and lots of that. And it was, there’s a lot of other complications including the fact that, of course, Solara always had access to the Human Genome Project’s data, but not vice versa, you know. And then, you know, lots of little micro dramas in the Us. Congress getting involved. And are we wasting taxpayer dollars, or should we put more taxpayer dollars? And shouldn’t the data be free, or should it not be free. You know. And by the way, lots of questions about whether they could ever build a business on this be successful? At the end of the day a lot of detente came into the scene, so that they sort of declared a tie in getting the draft sequence, the human genome. This was the imperfect but interim draft sequence, the genome sequence in 2001. And then it sort of became very clear that Solara was not going to have a sustainable business model, and only one group was really committed to getting high quality end to end sequence and making it freely available. And that was the Human Genome Project. And so Solara sort of went away. Craig went off and did other in some cases very successful things. He’s an incredibly talented scientist. But you know, at the end of the day Celera was never going to deliver with the Genome project delivered and the Genome project. And even what’s happened since the Genome project has been incredibly successful at getting data shareable to everybody in the world. All you need is connection.

Chinmay Singh: I had no idea there was beef.

Eric Green: Oh there was a lot, well you folks are so young I mean, you realize that when there was this, you know, big announcement in 2001, I mean Bill Clinton made the announcement with Francis Collins in the In the White House, with Francis Collins on one side of him and Craig Venter on the other side of him, and that same week those 2 men were featured on the cover of time magazine. Yeah. So I mean, that’s a big deal to be on the cover of Time magazine. So that’s a big deal, you know, and but you know at the end. So there was, you know, a lot of micro drama and a lot of high stakes, you know. And you think about it even for people like me. If, if hypothetically, Celera had destroyed the Human Genome Project and destroyed the public effort you know my career might have been destroyed, and a lot of my colleagues’ careers might have been destroyed. So you know, there are high stakes, and all of this, and I mean the good news is, you know, I it all worked out in the end, and but but you know there was not there was only one group that was gonna truly deliver a free product and be in it for the long hall, even when it was no longer, you know, something that was going to be glamorous, or that you could build a business around. And that was going to be the human genome product.

JP Flores (he/him): That’s that’s so, that’s so interesting. I know Chinmay has another question after, but I still have to like interject here, because it’s like, I forgot how this is gonna age me now. I forgot that Chinmay probably had no idea about that whole thing.

Chinmay Singh: I was born in 03.

Parth Shirolkar: 04

Eric Green: So nhgri really works hard at capturing this. I mean, you talk to historian. We have websites, and we have all sorts of things about really trying to showcase these things to set the record straight, because we realize that smart, energetic people like you were born after after I mean, you missed all the drama. And you know, I also like to tell some of these stories because I don’t want people to think for a minute, because this was a big deal that we did this. And part of the reason was a big deal is it wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t a slam dunk. And again I do worry that those of you born in 2003, you read about the human you hear about the Human Genome Project, your biology class. You read about it. And you think, wow! That was way cool that I’m sure that was straightforward, and I’m sure Eric Green. On day one was handed a manual. You just had a sort of walk through it from the beginning, I mean. Oh, my gosh! It was so untrue. And so I just think I’m not. We’re not trying to be glorious. But but but the other thing, the other reason I like to tell the story is, it is a story of audacity. Because I want your generation to know that if you come up against something where the goal is compelling and the path to the goal is completely unclear. Don’t shy away from the challenge, because I want you to think that if it’s not a clear path. I’m not taking the chance. No, no, no, no! When we put I from what I read, cause I was a kid then, young, you know, for the moonshot. They didn’t really know how they were gonna put a person on the moon, and we didn’t really know how you’re gonna sequence the genome. But if the the the goal is compelling you know, and it seems like there’s a way to at least start. And it’s the classic story of you know, the journey of a million miles starts with the first step. You just gotta get going and just try it and just try to recruit talented people to do it. The moonshot did it. The Human Genome Project did it.

Chinmay Singh: Yeah. And I think kind of tying into solara genomics. Our next question. It’s also a question that a PI of the lab that I work in, he kind of contributed to this question when he heard that you’re coming on our podcast, but like, can you talk about efforts that can, you know, possibly bridge the nhgri or any federal agency really with the private research sector, like the Illuminas, the Pac bios and like, what do drug development discoveries and all these different things like, what do they look like with these private research companies versus just nih funded projects?

Eric Green: Yeah, I think sometimes there’s a perception that you know you have the government, and then you have the private sector, and you know that there’s like a firewall between them, and that you know that you can’t have conversations. That’s just not true, I mean so I really want to be clear. Now, there’s lots of checks and balances you have to be really careful with taxpayer dollars. Let me speak to technology development because I’m more familiar with that than the drug discovery. I could speak to drug discovery. But it’s really not what genomics would I do, or what my history does? But let me give you a really concrete example that speaks directly to Illumina, and I think it’ll be helpful. So when the Genome Project ended, 20 years ago, or 20 and a half years ago, in 2,003, our Institute, put out a strategic vision for what’s next for our Institute and for Genomics now that the genome Project has accomplished and we laid out a series of really important high priority goals. One of the biggest, most important, high priority goal was, we must reduce the cost of sequencing the human genome. We had just sequenced the first one by the Human Genome Project. It cost about a billion dollars roughly, just rounded numbers. Well, a billion dollars. It’s a lot of money that’s not a very good clinical. You wanna do this on people right? And patience, we need to knock 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. We decided when we wrote the sentence in that paper in Nature we said, it has to be a thousand dollars. I mean it was another rounded number, and cause a thousand dollars is like the cost of an MRI or a Ct clinical test. So we came up with the figure of 1,000 genome that actually became a battle cry, the $1,000 genome! Of course, we had to go from a billion to 1,000. That’s 6 orders of magnitude. Once again we had no idea how we were gonna do this. We just had a really good slogan, the $1,000 genome and off we went. What did Nhgri do? And this directly answers your question. We put out a series of funding announcements that we will give out grants for technology development. Come up with all new ways of sequencing DNA. By the way, the way the Genome Project was completed was by saying or sequencing a method developed in 1977. But the Genome Project began. Some people said, we will never sequence the human genome unless we have new methods. Well, we actually didn’t get the new methods until after the Genome Project. We actually just figured out how to make Sanger sequencing better, better, better. We were saying we need new methods. We knew we’d never get down to a thousand dollar gnome with Sanger methods. And so we put out all sorts of funding opportunities where people could write grants to us to get money. And we said, Give us your way crazy idea. That’s, you know, 99.9% chance is gonna fail. And then we had a different set of grants. Go, just give us a reasonably crazy idea, which is only a 9, you know, 99.9% chance of failing and then give us a not so crazy idea that maybe has a 1% chance of success. I mean, I’m being funny. But you get the idea we wanted super high risk, medium risk, and then reasonable risk. And that came to different forms. A lot of that money went to Academia, but some of it went to the private sector. We’re fine giving our grants to the private sector, and, in fact, this is a really important point. You may not realize the Us. Congress demands that we give a certain percent of our dollars to small businesses. So as a whole program at Nih, where we give a small percentage of all of our money every year to small business program to stimulate small businesses. Now, I know Illumina is not a small business, but lots of little companies get developed. So what happened between the last 20 years is we got to the 1,000 genome. NHGRI we get partial credit because some of these crazy, super crazy or medium crazy ideas actually came true. We got incremental improvements. And then the private sector got really excited. So lots of private money came in. And it was the synergy between us, giving money, sometimes to academia, sometimes to small companies. Sometimes those small companies would get gobbled up by the bigger companies. Sometimes the bigger companies would go license from the universities where the small discoveries would make they license the patents so they could develop it, etc., etc. I give, this is a beautiful example of public private partnership. We were stimulating the academic world, and to some extent the business world. The business world was stimulating itself, and they would be illumina, would be the first to say we could have never done it without any nhgri and any sure I would say we could never have done it without illumina or Pac Bio, or any of them. It was a beautiful example. By the way, until the pandemic I used to always say that I think I’m being egotistical. I’d say I think the best example of technology development that Nih has ever supported. That’s been transformative is our technology development coming out of our Institute, DNA, sequencing. And then Mrna vaccines came along alright. Alright. NIH got a lot of credit for that so maybe we tied for first. But whatever. I’ll tell you one other really interesting thing, because we went through this extra to really hammer home the point that it’s not we versus them. This is poly collaborative. We haven’t gone through this exercise for about 4 or 5 years, but about 4 or 5 years ago somebody went through the intellectual exercise of taking an illumina based DNA sequencing instrument and intellectually ripping it apart with respect to the patents that go into that instrument, go into the upstream, workflow and all the chemistry, and go into all the downstream things. So anything associated with sequencing DNA on an illumina, that illumina machine. And I forgot what it was. You know, where there were like, you know, 98 patents that were required right? And I think out of those like 98 patents, something like 97 of them were patents that had connections back to Nhgri grants. So you know again, we I I’m not gonna take credit for producing that box, but I will take credit for a lot of the micro advances that then led to intellectual property and patents that could then be cobbled together by a company like Illumina, to actually put out a product. So to me, it’s synergistic and so and and still to this day, you know, their little grants You know, we give grants sometimes to these companies or some of our big consortium. They have multiple collaborators associate with some of the grants, and sometimes the collaborators are some of the members of the private sector. So it’s not a we versus them. This is really a very healthy ecosystem that with proper checks and balances about making sure taxpayer dollars are being treated appropriately, and people don’t get blah blah blah blah blah, and they follow all the policies and the rules when they get nih money. It could be a very, very productive collaboration.

JP Flores (he/him): yeah. So in terms of it not being us versus them, it it’s all about us, right? So the nhgri, to my fancy is doing a lot of work in the diversity, equity and inclusion, space or Dei space. Example. I’m sure the nhgri played a role with the National Academy of Sciences in developing the population descriptors in genetics and genomics. Yeah so, as a director, I was wondering if you thought about how you can implement these recommendations or how you can maybe even install these recommendations in graduate programs like mine, or even undergraduate programs like Chinmay and Parth’s.

Eric Green: Yeah, boy, there’s so many. Yeah, we could almost do a podcast in and of itself. By the way, I might even make a recommendation if you’re looking for additional people to do a podcast with, especially around that space, my deputy director at Nhgri, is a gentleman named Vince Bottom. He’s also very interesting because he doesn’t have a science degree. He has a Jd. Went to law school. He’s now the deputy director of the National Human Genome Research Institute with a Jd. and he is basically probably the thought leader, as far as I’m concerned in in the area of diversity and genomics, and he’s been a senior advisor for many years, but now is also serving as the Institute’s deputy director. He would be a terrific person to bring on your podcast exclusively to talk about that. And Jen, my communications. People like Jen could put you in contact with him. Here’s what I would say, and then you should have if you want more specific questions. What the Institute does is about every 7, 8 years we go through this huge round of strategic planning. That then leads to the production under publication of a major new strategic vision. We did one the day we published one the day the Human Genome Project ended in 2003. We then did one that came out shortly after I became director in 2011. And then, when it came to the new decade that we are now in, I thought we needed a new one. Things in genomics move so fast you have to do well, you can’t even wait 10 years to do a new one. So we had one that came on 2020, we started doing this strategic planning and discussing around, engaging the community, doing town halls, getting lots of information from lots of colleagues in 2018, and I was really really pleased with the following. I heard overwhelmingly and consistently everywhere we went, no matter who we spoke to as many ideas around fundamental values and principles that undergird the field of genomics. As I heard about the laundry list of, I need this technology, I need this piece of software. I need this thing with cloud computing. I need this thing with human genetics. I need these data sets. Of course, I heard lots of science, but what I heard more and a more equal balance was, was Nhgri you are so good at thinking about diversity of the genomics workforce diversity of research participants, of thinking about equity and health disparities, etc., etc., that please continue to lead in that articulate those values and principle. Blah blah blah, and it really had an impression on me that instead of it, just a big to do list of what they needed money, for they were actually asking for leadership, of value, leadership, and principal leadership. And I found that very endearing, and I found it so endearing that my community was calling for that overwhelmingly from all different scientists, even the ones that I thought were just such you know, critical computer scientists. They we’re asking the same questions and pushing for the same things that in fact, we did something. The way we structured our 2020 strategic vision we opened up to the first major area is all about values and principles that undergrad the field of genomics and prominently featured on that is, and it just comes up repeatedly throughout the strategic vision, is issues around diversity, equity, and so forth. And there’s a number of reasons for that. I mean, one is that we, we as genomicists even though we’re a young field. We do carry a lot of baggage, if you will. A lot of history associated with misuses of genetics. So you know things that happened with in eugenics. Whether we like it or not, it’s really tied to the fields of genetics and genomics now, so we can’t ignore that history. I don’t think we, as genomicists, have done a good enough job of making sure, as we thought about our research participants ensuring that they are diverse as they need to be. And now it’s really caught up with us and has limited what we can do. And then, as a physician scientist who’s pushing harder than anyone who’s ever pushed before the agenda of genomic medicine implementation. Oh, my gosh! I will be so disappointed if at the end of the day genomic medicine only benefits you know a subgroup of our population in the world. I don’t want it to just be no offense to Unc. I don’t want it to just be Unc. You know that the patients that are seen at the Unc. Medical school, or the patients that are seen at Johns Hopkins or Harvard. I don’t want it just to be them. I don’t want it just to be the wealthiest. I don’t want to be just the people in big cities. I don’t want it to just be people in the United States. And there is so much history in medicine of advances coming on the scene, and yes, they naturally get access more quickly by those who are of means, and those were in the right place. But we can do better. We can close that gap. And you know, we just we can do this. And so it’s a big part of what we want to push. And as we implement genomic medicine is to try to see if we could do this in a more equitable way, and everything we do, and try to not certainly not exacerbate health disparities. And so you know, and that then blossoms into lots of things. How you design studies, you know how, what, where you’re investing your dollars. But, and this is what Vance could speak about in even greater detail, because he and I one of the very first things that he did, and he deserves credit, but we did this together in showcasing, this is one of the very first things we came out after we published our 2020 strategic vision was sort of the first thing we went public with has been the one we’re really moving aggressively is dealing with the genomics workforce, and that’s broadly defined and making doing an effort to diversify it. And by genomics workforce, I mean from top to bottom. I mean, that means physician scientists. That means genetic counselors. That means graduate students. That means physician assistants, anybody that touches genomics, computer scientists, ethicists. You know, ethical, legal, social implications, researchers on and on and on policy people and so forth. We need that population of that whole workforce in genomics has to reflect humanity. It just can’t reflect a bunch of people that just look like me, for example. And so the fact is that’s just a very high priority. And so we’re trying to hit this on multiple cylinders. And it’s hard. We know that and it’s part of a microcosm of a bigger problem in science and stem. And we get all that. But you know, we’re gonna try to do our part. And it’s because we just are passionate about the importance of this.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah. And before Parth takes us home, I just wanna say that this means a lot coming from the director of the Nhgri, especially as a first generation college student. As a you know, Filipino student, Filipino scientist, and it reminds me of the interaction I had with Francis. So I think you are truly filling in the shoes of the second nhgri director.

Eric Green: I just do want to point out. I do think there is something fundamental about the you know, about the people that were attracted to the Human Genome Project, and who were willing to do something that at times wasn’t so glamorous, was high risk. It was not about personal glory it was about. There’s something we want to share data back then. There’s something about the people in genomics, I do believe, tend to be very altruistic, and maybe more altruistic than other parts of science. And so I’m not surprised to watch how Francis moved from the Genome Project to some of the things he pushed as an nih director. I’m not surprised how deeply I feel and strongly I feel about some of these issues we’re talking about because it’s the same feeling I had when I got involved in the Genome project like this is more important than me as an individual. This is huge, and this is, you know, there’s a once in a generation opportunity, and I’m honored to have been part of it. And now. But I also don’t want my legacy to be, wow they did this great thing in genomic revolution, and it only helped a small fraction of society. That would disappoint me.

JP Flores (he/him): Yeah, I feel like I’m ready to wall for you right now. So just let me know if you ever need, like a graduate student’s perspective on anything at that issue I was doing because I’m so willing to do it like I love genomics and genetics and just knowing that the leadership really does care means a lot.

Parth Shirolkar: Yeah, I think it’s awesome that, like your message on accessibility like, that’s what me and Chinmay trying to do here with our podcast just make your perspectives and all the scientific side of things is just accessible to the general public. So yeah, I guess a question as the top dog of your field. What do you foresee about like the direction of genetics and genomics in the future? Obviously you mentioned, there’s been a lot of advancements, and some of the projects I’ve heard of is like encode over at Stanford, which for the audience is like trying to map the human genome as well. And like gene transfer projects which have been dubbed as a potential cure for cancer.What projects do you personally find significant? What timeline do you kinda see for them? And yeah, like, how do you sort of see even like genetic discoveries from the Human Genome Project being translated into treatments for any specifics.

Eric Green: If you want to take a timely one,I think this is really, you know, it’s a really, philosophically, you could just really talk a lot about what you know last month with the FDA approaching a couple of gene therapy sickle cell. By the way, you know I don’t know if you appreciate this or not, but let me just remind you. With the day the Human Genome Project began October 1,990. There were 61 rare diseases that we knew what the gene was, and so the Genome project gets no credit for those 61 diseases. One of them was sickle cell. And for the longest time we sort of kept saying when is genomics gonna help sickle cell, when is genomics gonna help sickle cell, when is Genomics gonna help sickle cell? Well, it actually turns out, genomics has really helped sickle cell. And I don’t have time to tell you all the details. But you even mentioned the encode project that actually played a major role in it, too, because it turns out the way they’re doing some of these very fancy gene therapy work. It involves getting some information about how the human genome works capitalizing on that. And then, of course, there’s all this genome editing stuff that’s going on, and then delivery. And it’s a crazy start. Finally you know, a disease that we didn’t help discover the gene for. But we’re helping therapeutically. And so maybe I can answer your question about, where do I see it going? I mean, we could talk for days about this. First of all, what I guarantee you is that there’s no way we could possibly know all the ways we’re gonna see genomic advances. I mean the one thing I’ve learned in this business is just get ready to be surprised. But you know some of these things are gonna be predictable. And and and some of these things are gonna happen faster, and some are gonna be really unpredictable. And so the second thing I would say is, that this is probably the most important thing to keep in mind, and we really think about this a lot at Nih and you actually may find, if you look at some of our materials, or even the strategic plan in our title, in our strategic vision in 2020, we now have a new organizational mantra called the Forefront of genomics, where we feel that our Institute needs to be about the forefront of genomics. And the reason for that is because everybody’s doing genomics. And so one of the predictions I will make is that once upon a time, you know, maybe everybody will look at you call me the top dog and genomics. You look at an nhgri and say they’re the top leaders of genomics, and we are, but it’s not because nobody else does genomics. Every institute does genomics, every field does genomics and every clinical field is going to do genomics. Every basic science field is going to do genomics. So what I, one of the things I predict over the next 10 years is that genomics is going to be so disseminated. It is seeping into every part of the landscape of biomedical research that in some ways, and we get nervous about, maybe it won’t have an identity. So because it’s sort of everywhere. It’s so fundamental. And it’s part of the reason why we, as an institute want to sort of portray ourselves as the forefront of genomics so that we could articulate, and that’s what we do in our strategic vision, what it means to be the top Dog Institute in a field that is incredibly disseminated. And that’s not always the case in all fields of science. And sometimes it’s not disseminated. But everybody does genomics now. So because of that we will see a thousand flowers bloom, and some of it will be biological basic science insights, and some of it will relate to ancestry. Some of relate to, you know look at all the ancient DNA work going on now. Some of it will be learning about Neanderthal, so we’ll be learning about other extinct species, something about fundamentals of evolution. Some of it’ll be about therapies for rare diseases. Some of it’ll be about cancer. Some will be more on the diagnostic side. Some of it will be more on the therapeutic side. Some of it will be more fundamental understanding of how genes are regulated. So really, what I expect to see is incredible way cool advances that are taking place on multiple fronts, across anything that involves DNA, which is all live sciences and with a lot of surprises and things that we’ll just, we’ll just marvel at.

Parth Shirolkar: Yeah, yeah, that’s great to hear. Thank you so much for your time, like again, like, I know you’re enthusiastic about joining us here. But, we really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to come talk to us, provide your perspectives.

Eric Green: I had a blast and I admire greatly what you folks are doing, and we care passionately about genomic literacy. We care passionately about getting young people excited about stem and stem careers, or even if they’re not interested in stem careers, it’s so important for people, everybody to understand the fundamentals of genomics because it’s gonna become mainstream in their medical care. And we are all gonna be patients. That’s just the reality. We are all patients of the healthcare system, and genomics will be mainstream. So it’s important, just at least have fundamental knowledge of genomics. Which is why I’m delighted to do things like this.