24 September 1999 Paul Sieving ('70)

I am a professor of Ophthalmology in the medical school at University of Michigan. I see patients with eye diseases one-day each week and spend remainder of my time conducting research. Part of this research is in electrical phenomenon of retinal cells, and this part of the word builds on my experience with physics and electronics. A majority of my work, however, is based on graduate education and one-the-job learning experiences since leaving Valparaiso University. This part of the work involves molecular genetics to identify genes that are causing the idea season my patients and to construct transgenic mice which carry these genetic defects.

I am quite proud of having identified a family in the Detroit MI area that is the only family known to have a particular mutation in the rhodopsin gene which is a cause of "night blindness" in affected individuals. This particular mutation has a "physics correlation," in that the cause of night blindness is a thermodynamic instability in the rhodopsin molecule caused by this mutation. My laboratory has made a transgenic mouse with this mutation and we have studied the cell biology and electrophysiology of the disease.

Currently we are working on a genetic knockout mouse in which we remove the function of a gene to cause disease. The particular disease allows the layers of the retina to split apart war as normally they are "biologically glued together" of which keeps the retina intact. Again, there is a physics basis to this interest.

After leaving Valpo, I went to graduate school at Yale University in nuclear physics (1970-74). During those years there was an explosion of information about genetics, and one of the other physics graduate students switched into the department of biology to do molecular genetics. My interest involved toward a medical career, and I left Yale to attend the University of Illinois medical school. During that time I realize that my primary interest was in research, and I completed a joint M.D.-Ph.D. degree in bio-engineering.

To do productive research, one also needs to have hands on experience beyond graduate school, and I did a post-doctoral fellowship in retinal physiology at UC San Francisco. These two parts of my training then came together in a third training, termed a "medical fellowship" which I did at Harvard. It was during this time that I was exposed to human molecular genetics, and I have followed this field professionally since then. I have been at the University of MI for 15 years.

Physics at Valparaiso shaped my career and allowed me to pursue my interests. Although I am not doing physics work directly at this point, the rigorous training and mathematical modeling is an integral part of my research path.

Paul