Greg Gibson
Professor
Director, Center for Integrative Genomics
Adjunct Professor, School of Medicine, Emory University
Greg Gibson is Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Integrative Genomics at Georgia Tech. He received his BSc majoring in Genetics from the University of Sydney (Australia) and PhD in Developmental Genetics from the University of Basel. After transitioning to quantitative genetic research as a Helen Hay Whitney post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, he initiated a program of genomic research as a David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellow at the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in Fall of 2009, after ten years at North Carolina State University where he developed tools for quantitative gene expression profiling and genetic dissection of development in the fruitfly Drosophila. He is now collaborating with the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being on integrative genomic analyses of the cohort. Dr Gibson is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves as Section Editor for Natural Variation for PLoS Genetics. He has authored a prominent text-book, a "Primer of Genome Science" as well as a popular book about genetics and human health, "It Takes a Genome".
greg.gibson@biology.gatech.edu
404-385-2343
Office Location:
EBB 2115A
Quantitative Evolutionary Genetics. After 15 years working on genomic approaches to complex traits in Drosophila, my group has spent much of the past 10 years focusing on human quantitative genetics. We start with the conviction that genotype-by-environment and genotype-by-genotype interactions are important influences at the individual level (even though they are almost impossible to detect at the population level). We use a combination of simulation studies and integrative genomics approaches to study phenomena such as cryptic genetic variation (context-dependent genetic effects) and canalization (evolved robustness) with the main focus currently on disease susceptibility. Immuno-Transcriptomics.As one of the early developers of statistical approaches to analysis of gene expression data, we have a long-term interest in applications of transcriptomics in ecology, evolution, and lately disease progression. Since blood is the mostaccessible human tissue, we've examined how variation is distributed within and among populations, across inflammatory and auto-immune states, and asked how it relates to variation in immune cell types. Our axes-of-variation framework provides a new way of monitoring lymphocyte, neutrophil, monocyte and reticulocyte profiles from whole peripheral blood. Most recently we have also been collaborating on numerous studies of specific tissues or purified cell types in relation to such diseases as malaria, inflammatory bowel disease, juvenile arthritis, lupus, and coronary artery disease. Predictive Health Genomics. Personalized genomic medicine can be divided into two domains: precision medicine and predictive health. We have been particularly interested in the latter, asking how environmental exposures and gene expression, metabolomic and microbial metagenomics profiles can be integrated with genomesequencing or genotyping to generate health risk assessments. A future direction is incorporation of electronic health records into genomic analyses of predictive health. Right now it is easier to predict the weather ten years in advance than loss of well-being, but we presume that preventative medicine is a big part of the future of healthcare.
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