Arun Sethuraman: Personal Story

Apr 11, 2016 By Arun Sethuraman
Deepa Gopal's picture
 
Like a lot of you, I grew up watching detective shows on television – ranging from Scooby Doo cartoons, to the drama on CSI, to the sometimes scary reality of The New Detectives, and The First 48. 

On those shows, forensic labs could use a drop of blood or a single hair left behind at a crime scene to positively identify a criminal. I didn’t have the internet to tell me “how” they did it – it all seemed magical.

This was back in the 1990s – a time when genetic technology was making monster steps towards better methods to nail criminals in courts. I was instantly hooked, and I wanted to learn that magic. I knew that I had to become a scientist that studies DNA (and perhaps catches the bad guys someday!). As time flew by, I decided to pursue a degree in computer science instead, as it seemed like a better option for finding jobs. 

After years of studying and working in computer science, I was introduced to the miraculous world of bioinformatics during my junior year of college. Bioinformatics is the science of using computers to answer biological questions.  This field blended my skills with computers with my love of biology and I knew that I had struck gold.

My Pursuit Of Science

Armed with many more follow-up classes in biology, genetics, and bioinformatics, I applied to graduate school to pursue a Ph.D. I found myself lost again in the infinite variety of questions that bioinformatics can help address.

After many months of pondering my choices, I decided to revisit the questions of my childhood –

  • How do we tell two people apart using DNA (e.g. me from my brother, or my uncle, a culprit from an innocent) despite us all sharing common ancestry (we are all relatives)?
  • Why do species exhibit so much diversity even though they are also related?

I developed new computer programs to do exactly this – studying differences and similarities in DNA, among individuals (humans), populations (of endangered turtles, and highly invasive lady beetles), or species (working with different species of turtles), and earned my Ph.D. in 2013.

Since then, my research has spanned into more specific questions about what happens when a population splits up, and two groups of individuals go their own ways – for example, a large river suddenly splits up two groups of chimpanzees (chimps aren’t the best swimmers!) What happens next? 

Comments

Toheeb's picture
Toheeb December 8, 2016 - 4:14pm

soundas intresting

Aditya08's picture
Aditya08 March 21, 2016 - 3:50pm
I've never heard of population genetics. It sounds interesting though.