About Roe

The University of Oklahoma’s Advanced Center for Genome Technology is practically synonymous with its director, biochemistry professor Bruce Roe. Designated a Genome Center by the National Institutes of Health, National Human Genome Research Institute since 1990, the ACGT was one of the first three laboratories involved in the worldwide Human Genome Project. Since then, its research team has mapped the first completed human chromosome – chromosome 22 – and in the process discovered genes involved in several forms of brain cancer, leukemia, mental retardation and schizophrenia.

As a result of the Human Genome Project, many tests have been developed for different cancer genes. Roe and his team played a critical role in a new treatment for leukemia because it mapped the structure of the leukemia genes. “Those genes come from chromosome 9 and 22 which, when merged with each other make a fusion protein,” says Roe. “Normally it is one protein here and one there, but with the swip-swap you bring two of these together. Based on that knowledge, there now is a new test and drug for leukemia.”

ACGT's current research covers vertebrates (mice, chimpanzees, baboons and zebrafish) to plant life (alfalfa, soybeans, and plant and grass fungi).