Francis Collins - Early Years

Early Years

Raised on a small farm in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, Collins was home schooled until the sixth grade. He attended Robert E. Lee High School. Through most of his high school and college years, he aspired to be a chemist, and had little interest in what he then considered the "messy" field of biology. What he refers to as his "formative education" was received at the University of Virginia, where he earned a B.S. in Chemistry in 1970. He went on to attain a Ph.D. in physical chemistry at Yale University in 1974. While at Yale, however, a course in biochemistry sparked his interest in the subject. After consulting with his old mentor from the University of Virginia, Carl Trindle, he changed fields and enrolled in medical school at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, earning there an M.D. in 1977.

From 1978 to 1981, he served a residency and chief residency in internal medicine at North Carolina Memorial Hospital in Chapel Hill. He then returned to Yale, where he was named a Fellow in Human Genetics at the medical school from 1981 to 1984. He worked under the direction of Sherman Weissman, and in 1984 they published an important work, a paper titled Directional cloning of DNA fragments at a large distance from an initial probe: a circularization method. This method was named chromosome jumping, to remark the contrast with the then current method of chromosome walking, that required to walk along the DNA chain.

He joined the University of Michigan in 1984, rising to the rank of Professor of Internal Medicine and Human Genetics. He heightened his reputation as a gene hunter. That gene-hunting approach, which he named "positional cloning", developed into a powerful component of modern molecular genetics.

In the 1980s, several scientific teams were working to identify the genes for cystic fibrosis. Toward the end of the decade, progress had been made, but Lap-Chee Tsui, heading the team working at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, considered that a shortcut was needed, to speed up the process. For this purpose, he contacted Francis Collins, who joined the team and used his chromosome jumping technique. subsequently, the gene was discovered in June 1989. The discovery was covered by Science Sept 8, 1989. This was soon followed by other scientific teams genetic discoveries, including isolation of the genes for Huntington's disease, neurofibromatosis, and multiple endocrine neoplasia type 1.

Mention of his guitar playing and motor-cycle riding can often be found in articles about him. Collins' music draws on a sense of humor and fun. While directing the National Human Genome Research Institute, he formed a rock band with other NIH scientists. In its rare appearances, the band entertained selected Maryland and Washington, D.C.-area audiences, such as science writers. Sometimes the band, called "The Directors", dueled with a rock band from Johns Hopkins University, led by cancer researcher Bert Vogelstein. Lyrics of The Directors' songs included spoofs of rock and gospel classics re-written to address the challenges of contemporary biomedical research.