I don’t think that this field is any more competitive than others, all fields are competitive, and all fields are populated by very driven people. So I think the interesting thing in the genome area was the competition between Celera and the public project. That was something which really did drive things at a fantastic rate. That’s actually very rare. Competition at that level is very rare. So this is at the project level. And that’s not common in science.

Peter Little is a bioinformatics researcher, professor of medical biochemistry and the head of the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He received his Ph.D. working with recombinant DNA under Ed Southern and Peter Walker at Edinburgh University. In 1976, Little cloned a human gene – the second time this was ever accomplished.

Little’s laboratory studies the genetic basis of gene expression, and genetic variation as it pertains to the regulatory regions of the genes. He has hypothesized that there are two types of genetic variation that alter gene expression. His lab has also created advanced techniques for testing genetically influenced transcript variations.

He comes to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory regularly for genome meetings and symposia.