 I want to summarize the past 60 years of molecular biology, a very new science and illustrate the growing importance of this science in society and an example of its translation to treat disease. Recall that molecular biology had its origins in the discovery of structure of DNA by Watson and Crick in 1953. For the first time, mankind understood the chemical basis of inheritance, of all life forms, including himself. Three decades later, the science advanced with the ability to synthesize sequence and recombine DNA, creating synthetic biology. In the mid-70s, a number of biotech companies were started to translate this science into the society and treatment of disease. One of these was Biogen, organized in 1978, and the first to open a laboratory near MIT. Biotech has generated new treatment for previously untreatable diseases, hundreds of thousands of new jobs, small and large biotech companies in blue, are now clustered around MIT in yellow, creating a unique biotech innovation cluster in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Through the 90s, molecular biology advanced through the genomic revolution, with completion of the human genome sequence in 2003, 50 years after the discovery of Watson and Crick. This has revealed the genetic basis of many diseases and is leading biotechnology forward. Further, the decreasing cost of DNA sequencing is allowing determination of the genetic makeup of all life forms, microorganisms, the plant kingdom. This vast body of information will drive science and molecular biology and biotech rapidly forward. The rate of this decrease is faster than that of Moore's law, which drove the IT revolution over the last 50 years. Molecular biology, cell biology with engineering, computational science, physical science will be necessary to take advantage of all this molecular biology and genomic information. The new Koch Institute at MIT is a convergent institute. As you've heard from two engineers working there, there's 12 engineers and 12 biologists in this institute. Examples of convergent science in the Koch is the inclusion of nanotechnology in the study and treatment of cancer, the creation of small devices to monitor body fluids, and new sensors to image normal and disease processes. The Koch is only part of the convergent movement at MIT. Today, more than a third of all MIT engineers are involved in life science. In addition, mathematicians, computer science, physicists, ecologists are all addressing fundamental problems in molecular biology using genomic information and convergent-type technology and thinking. As an example of convergent science, I will briefly summarize the translation of a Nobel Prize, the discovery of RNA interference by Andy Farr and Craig Mellow, and Andy was a graduate student at MIT. They discovered in 1998 that double-strand RNA from a gene would silence a gene when introduced into cells. Including S-I-R-N-A as shown here, knowing the sequence of a disease-causing gene would translate directly into treatment, a radical advance in medical science. The gene-to-disease relationship is similar to the current treatment therapies where oral drugs intercells to inhibit a gene protein, and antibodies bind to proteins on the surface of a cell to either activate the cell or kill the cell. Both gene-specific approaches. Thirteen years of convergent research has shown that linking this small RNA to a complex sugar that binds to the receptor on the surface of a human liver cell will facilitate the small RNA to transport into the cell and yield silencing of a disease gene. Knowing this delivery technology is shown here, it is now possible to give a patient one injection, sub-Q, and silence the activity of a disease gene for five months. Thus, the convergence of molecular biology, chemistry, engineering, clinical science has led to the innovation of a whole new class of drugs, small RNAs, that if you know the structure of a gene, you can design a drug almost directly from it. You can design medicine at the bench, and therefore convergent science is an increasingly important part of our future in biomedical science. And my question for you is if you have this tool of being able to silence a gene by designing a small RNA, what diseases would you apply it to?