Oh, I really like coming here. I mean I like the Cold Spring Harbor meetings on the genome better than any of the other meetings I’ve gone to. I think it seems and I’m not sure what, really what plays a key role. I get into more interesting discussions with a wide variety of people. It’s partly having the bar there after the meetings. It’s partly the fact that you’re, I mean, you sit down at lunch or dinner and you’re generally meeting people you didn’t know, and you’re hearing talks on very interesting discoveries from a variety of people.

I think the level of the science is very high compared to some of the other meetings. So it’s a combination of things. I find it very—every time I come here, it really stimulates my thinking and I nearly always have some ideas that I carry back to my research as a result of the conversations and the talks that I hear.

Philip Green is a professor of genome sciences, an adjunct professor of the Computer Science and Engineering Department at the University of Washington, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, and was recently elected into the National Academy of Sciences.

Green designs software packages which aid in making genetic maps and identifying genes within the genome. He is concerned with constructing computational tools to understand cell functioning at a molecular level. Green has created the program Phred, which manages the data generated by the Human Genome Project and which is being used to help determine the most common variations in human DNA. Green’s laboratory is working to construct a gene-annotated genome sequence. His lab has modified the number of genes thought to be in the human genome—it is substantially fewer than had been previously believed.

Green spoke at the 68th Cold Spring Harbor Symposium focused on the Genome of Homo Sapiens.