• Gryphon Login
  • MyCourses
  • Alumni
  • UCLA Health
  • Contact Us
Prospective Students

Prospective Students

Prospective Students
  • Admissions
    Procedure & Timelines
    • Admissions Timeline
    • Admissions Procedure
    • Basis of Selection
    • COVID-19 Impacts on Admissions
    • Housing Information
    • Interview Process
    • Prerequisites
    General Information
    • Statement of Diversity
    • Mission Statement
    • Curriculum Resdesign
    • Honor Code
    • FAQs
    • Admissions Brochure
    • Admissions Timeline
    • Admission Procedure
    • Basis of Selection
    • Competencies
    • COVID-19 Impact on Admissions
    • DACA Applicants
    • DGSOM Mission Statement
    • FAQs
    • Honor Code
    • Housing Information
    • Interview Process
    • Statement of Diversity
    • Virtual Events
  • Outreach & Pipeline Programs
    Summer Pre-Health and Postbaccaluareate Programs
    • UCLA SHPEP
    • UCLA PREP
    • UCLA RAP
    Outreach and Recruitment
    • Conferences and Events
    • Stay Connected!
    • Contact Us
    • Conferences & Outreach Events
    • Summer Pre-Health and Postbaccalaureate Programs
    • Contact Us
    • Stay Connected
  • Financial Aid & Scholarships
  • Degrees & Programs
  • Curriculum
  • Student Life
    Why Choose UCLA
    • Research
    • Clinical Work
    • Service Opportunities
    • Global Health Impact
    • Why You'll Love LA
    Campus Life
    • Student Organizations
    • Annual Events
    • Day in the Life
    • Around Campus
    • Photo Galleries
    • Medical and Research News
    • Medical Student Council
    • Geffy Guide
    • Search Campus and Health News
    • Service Opportunities
    • Global Health Impact
    • Why You'll Love LA
    • Photo Galleries
    • Day in the Life
    • Around Campus
    • Medical and Research News
    • Search Campus and Health News
  • How to Apply
  • Gryphon Login
  • MyCourses
  • Alumni
  • UCLA Health
  • Contact Us

Prospective Students

Search Campus and Health News

Search Campus and Health News

Search Campus and Health News

  • Health News
  • A Day in the Life
  • Around Campus
  • Medical and Research News
  • Health News
  • A Day in the Life
  • Around Campus
  • Medical and Research News
  1. Home
  2. Prospective Students
  3. Student Life
  4. Search Campus and Health News

Search Campus and Health News

Share this

Day in the Life

Title

Evolving Technologies Turn Science Fantasy Into Reality

Day in the Life

Date
06/20/2018
Article
Leonid Kruglyak, PhD

Leonid Kruglyak, PhD

Science and technology are moving at an accelerated speed, especially in the field of genetics.

"What's been really fun about working in this field for the last couple of decades is how rapidly the technologies have evolved and become more powerful," says Leonid Kruglyak, PhD. "Experiments that you couldn't have conceived of at all — or that would have seemed like complete science fiction 10 years ago — are now routine and easy."

Dr. Kruglyak, who is chair of the Department of Human Genetics at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM), has witnessed three generations of major technological innovations. "It's changed everything we do and what people in the field do," he says. 

Biology was not part of Dr. Kruglyak's early beginnings. He received his undergraduate and doctorate degrees in theoretical physics, and later, during his postdoctoral training, he retrained as a quantitative geneticist. "I originally applied computational approaches and techniques I learned as a physicist to problems in the genome project and human genetics, and later, after I started my first faculty job, I added a laboratory-bench research component."

Bridging the gap between science and technology

Human genetics, the youngest basic science department at DGSOM, is dedicated to turning mountains of raw genetic data into a detailed understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of human disease. Dr. Kruglyak finds his theoretical physics background helpful in genetic studies. 

"We ask fundamental questions and to try to tackle them in the simplest possible setting. At every stage of our work, from experimental design to interpretation, there is a lot of computation necessary to take full advantage of the large-scale data sets that modern technologies generate."

The foundation of Dr. Kruglyak's experimental research emerged in the late 1990s with DNA-microarray technology and has evolved more recently with the development of DNA sequencing and editing. "Not that long ago, you needed several giant research centers with hundreds of instruments, large numbers of technical staff, years of work and hundreds of millions of dollars to generate an initial sequence of a single human genome. Now, that's been replaced with bench-top instruments in your lab that enable you to sequence a genome in a few days for a couple of thousand dollars."

Even newer techniques like CRISPR-Cas9 allow Dr. Kruglyak and his fellow researchers to edit the genome by altering sections of DNA. Experiments that were once near to impossible are now practical.

What does the future hold?

Dr. Kruglyak sees a future that is less and less limited by tools. He says the development of new technologies and insights will help those who study specific diseases figure out which genes are the key players. "Once you know that, there are immediate implications for things like diagnosis, as well as a starting point for the long and painstaking process of looking for new treatments."

Like Us on Facebook Follow Us on Twitter Subscribe to Our Videos on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Connect with Us on LinkedIn Follow us on Pinterest Follow us on Flickr Follow us on Sharecare
Top 10 U.S. Medical Schools
  • Giving
  • Publications
  • Newsroom
  • Weekly Digest
  • Directory
  • Contact Us
  • Diversity
  • Emergency
  • Maps & Directions
  • UC Regents
  • Abuse Free
  • Volunteer
  • Biomed Library
  • Disability Resources
  • UCLA Health
  • Smoke-Free
  • Sitemap
  • Terms of Use
Top 10 U.S. Medical Schools
Like Us on Facebook Follow Us on Twitter Subscribe to Our Videos on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Connect with Us on LinkedIn Follow us on Pinterest Follow us on Flickr Follow us on Sharecare