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Sven Bocklandt | |
|---|---|
| Alma mater | Ghent University (B.Sc.,M.Sc.) University of Antwerp (Ph.D.) |
| Known for | Work on sexual orientation genetics Epigenetic clocks De-extinction of the dire wolf |
Sven Bocklandt is a Belgian-American geneticist and former science journalist known for his research on the genetic basis of sexual orientation and his work at Colossal Biosciences to de-extinct the dire wolf. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] He is one of the first developers of epigenetic clocks. [6]
Sven earned his Bachelor's degree in Biology and Master's in Biotechnology from Ghent University. He received his doctorate degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
Bocklandt was also a science journalist for Belgian public television. He wrote and produced over 50 TV segments for the VRT program De Kip of Het Ei, [7] and two documentaries for Canvas program Over Leven, where he communicated complex scientific and technological breakthroughs to a broad prime time audience. [8] [9] It was while working on a documentary that he first met geneticist Dean Hamer. [1]
Bocklandt began working as a post-graduate researcher in 2000, relocating from Belgium to the United States to work with geneticist Dean Hamer at the National Institute of Health in Washington, D.C. He remained at the NIH until 2003. Hamer previously published the study "A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation" [10] in 1993 that found evidence for unidentified genetic factors in the Xq28 band of the X chromosome that influence male sexual orientation. [11] In 2003, Bocklandt and Hamer published their hypothesis, along with a proposal of a hypothetical experiment to further explore their ideas, in a paper titled "Beyond hormones: a novel hypothesis for the biological basis of male sexual orientation" [2] in the Journal of Endocrinological Investigation. In 2005, Bocklandt and Hamer, along with other researchers, published another paper titled "A genome wide scan of male sexual orientation" [12] in the journal Human Genetics. This paper detailed their research, using a sample of 456 individuals from 146 families with two or more gay brothers. They did not find any links between homosexuality and Xq28; however, Bocklandt and the team insist that more research is needed, ending the abstract of the paper by saying "The results of this first genome screen for normal variation in the behavioral trait of sexual orientation in males should encourage efforts to replicate these findings in new samples with denser linkage maps in the suggested regions." [12]
Bocklandt continued to study the genetic basis of sexual orientation for the rest of the decade, publishing his final paper on the topic, "the genetics of sex differences in brain and behavior", in 2010. [13] Bocklandt has appeared in popular media, such as magazines, newspapers, TV and radio in Belgium, [9] [14] [15] [16] the Netherlands, [17] [18] the United States, [1] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] the United Kingdom [26] [27] and Australia. [28]
The biological basis for sexual orientation remains poorly understood. In 2019, Ganna et al. published a paper in the journal Science titled "Large scale GWAS reveals insights into the genetic architecture of same-sex sexual behavior", [29] which concluded that sexual orientation is significantly influenced by not just one or a few genes but by many, along with non-genetic factors.
In 2003, Bocklandt began working on post-doctoral research at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. Bocklandt, along with Steve Horvath and Eric Vilain, developed and patented an epigenetic method to predict the age of an individual with a reported average accuracy of 5.2 years. [6] [30] They published their work in 2011 in the online journal PLOS One. While Bocklandt didn’t pursue further work on the epigenetic clock, Horvath did continue its development, with the clock now commonly named after Horvath. [31]
In 2010 Bocklandt left UCLA and in 2014 began working at Bionano Genomics as the VP Director of scientific affairs and corporate communication. [32] [8]
In 2006, Bocklandt co-founded the company Felix Pets [33] with the goal of producing the first hypoallergenic cat through gene-editing. The company reportedly used the gene editing tools ZFN, TALEN, and CRISPR-Cas9 [34] [35] for this purpose. Bocklandt holds patents for methods for producing hypoallergenic cats. [34] [36]
In June 2022, Bocklandt joined Colossal Biosciences as a Species Director. [37] [38] [39] There, he participated in work that created modified gray wolves utilizing DNA recovered from fossilized remains of dire wolves, an extinct species. Bocklandt extracted DNA from the only two dire wolf specimens known to contain usable DNA -- a 13,000-year-old tooth found in Sheridan Pit, Ohio, and a 72,000-year-old ear bone from American Falls, Idaho. [4] A total of 16.2x coverage of the dire wolf genome was generated from these two samples and used to analyze the ancestry of the extinct dire wolf, published in a study preprint. [40] Bocklandt also contributed to analysis of the genome of the extinct blue antelope, or bluebuck. [41]
Colossal Biosciences has described this as the de-extinction of the dire wolf. [42] The claim of de-extinction has been disputed on the basis that the animals created are hybridized gray wolves and not instances of the extinct dire wolf species. This work has also been criticized as a distraction from conservation efforts necessary to avert the extinction of living animals. [43]
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