Princeton Head Talks Genes

Princeton President Shirley M. Tilghman addressed a star-studded capacity crowd in Askwith Lecture Hall yesterday afternoon.

Among the University bigwigs on hand for Tilghman’s lecture on “Genomic Imprinting: A Genetic Arms Race” were President Lawrence H. Summers, Provost Steven E. Hyman, Dean of the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study Drew Gilpin Faust, Kennedy School Dean Joseph S. Nye and former Acting Dean of Radcliffe Mary Maples Dunn.

Members of the Harvard Corporation, gathered in Cambridge yesterday for one of their regular meetings, were also in attendance.

Faust said yesterday that she had invited Tilghman to give the lecture last spring, before Tilghman had been tapped to be Princeton’s next president.

“We didn’t know this was going to become a state visit,” Faust quipped, during her introductory remarks.

Tilghman’s lecture focused on genomic imprinting—the “arms race” between the father’s and mother’s genes to control the development of the embryo. Each set of genes tries to control the speed of the embryo’s growth to its own advantage.

Male genes tend to favor quick growth under the theory that bigger is always better, Tilghman said. Female genes, on the other hand, favors quantity of offspring over size.

This phenomenon of imprinting occurs only in mammals with placentae, such as humans, rodents, cows, pigs and horses.

Tilghman has devoted much of her career to research this process. The research has proven that imprinting has major implications on species evolution.

“Imprinting is helping us create diversity,” Tilghman said.

As a scientist, Tilghman has performed research on the cutting edge of molecular biology. She served on the National Research Council, which laid out the plan for the U.S. effort in the human genome project, helped to found the National Advisory Council of the Human Genome Project and is a member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society.

“Shirley herself seems to have inherited...a good set of genes,” said Elizabeth Robertson, professor of molecular and cellular biology, in her introduction yesterday.

Tilghman became a member of the Princeton Faculty in 1986, when she was appointed as the Howard A. Prior professor of the life sciences. She took the helm at Princeton this fall.

Tilghman also served on Radcliffe’s ad hoc committee—the advisory body that shaped Radcliffe’s transformation from a college to an institute for advanced study.

“[Tilghman] played a critical role in what Radcliffe has become and what it will become in the future,” Faust said.

Yesterday’s event was part of the Radcliffe Dean’s Lecture Series and was followed by a reception in Fay House in Radcliffe Yard.

—Staff writer Kate L. Rakoczy can be reached at rakoczy@fas.harvard.edu.