SEMINAR: Is Prevention of genetic disease eugenics, An Aeolian lecture

Nigel Laing was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. He graduated with his PhD from Edinburgh University in 1979, did one post-doc year in Oslo in 1980 and emigrated to Western Australia in 1981. From 1976 to 1987 he was a neuroembryologist working on motor neuron and muscle development. In 1987-1988 he retrained in human molecular genetics at Duke University. Back in Western Australia he developed both research and diagnostic molecular neurogenetics laboratories. His laboratory has played a role in the identification of twenty-five human disease genes, including mutations in the skeletal muscle a-actin gene (ACTA1) in congenital myopathy and slow skeletal/a-cardiac myosin in "Laing" distal myopathy. His laboratory is dedicated to further gene discovery, understanding the pathobiology of the diseases, developing effective therapies, developing next generation sequencing diagnostics and prevention of genetic disease through population screening. Nigel was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in June 2015, and is a fellow of: the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences (FAHMS), the Faculty of Science of the Royal College of Pathologist of Australasia (FFSc(RCPA)) and the Human Genetics Society of Australasia (FHGSA)