Concluding Remarks from Christos Georgakis

My main research interests are in sequence-to-activity mapping and the basic principles for the ability to evolve and gain new functionalities. My experience spans from studying mutations that promote cancer to isolating mutations that confer new properties such as resistance to various antibiotics in microbes. My short-term goals include the investigation of two extremes of the mutational spectrum, namely a single mutation with a large phenotypic effect, and multiple mutations resulting with no impact at all. My longer term plans include a deeper study of mutational tolerance and to design overlapping, functional genes. Overlapping genes may help in avoiding mutational escape of engineered strains that have lower fitness values than their wild type counterparts. I also plan to combine my two fields of expertise to implant mammalian signaling pathways into bacteria with the purpose of increasing the pace of drug discovery and to expand the understanding of those pathways in an orthogonal environment.

Teaching Interests:

I consider myself primarily as a biologist and as such feel very comfortable in teaching many aspects of biological sciences including cell and molecular biology, genetics, microbiology evolution and biochemistry. I can also teach advanced classes in signal transduction, cancer biology, synthetic biology and bioengineering. Moreover, I am always enthusiastic to learn new material as needed to expand my teaching repertoire.