A friend of President Bill Perry will be speaking about gene activations in the environment Tuesday.

Kenneth Ramos, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, will be speaking about human genetics and the effects of environmental habits.

The seminar “Genome Plasticity: A Story on Lines and Genetic Reprogramming” will take place at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the Lumpkin Hall Auditorium Room 2030.

Karen Gaines, the chairperson of the biological sciences department, said Ramos is an interesting man.

“He is a biologist, and he looks at the interaction between genes and the environment and basically environmental disease,” Gaines said.

She said his presentation will focus on the medical side of biology.

“You have DNA, you have your genes, and it serves as a program of what you might become,” Gaines said. “As an example, you may have the gene for breast cancer, or I might, but it doesn’t mean you are going to get it.”

Gaines said Ramos will talk about why some genes are not active and others are.

“There are so many things that happen in your life, whether it is proper nutrition or exposure to different things in the environment,” Gaines said. “There are all these different things, nothing that you can necessarily predict or that we even know yet of what turns that gene on.”

He is going to be examining what aspects of the environment turn on these different genes.

Ramos has a doctorate and a medical degree, which Gaines said is a unique thing.

“There are not many people who would do that,” Ganies said. “Once you have a doctorate and a tenure track, not many people would go back and get their MD, so I find that as truly intriguing about him.”

She said Ramos has many different publications about the field and is surprised he had the time to get his MD.

Gaines said she has never met Ramos and is excited to see environmental genetics from a different angle.

She said she studies environmental biology, and her husband studies things similar to Ramos, so she is used to the conversation but rarely hears about it from a medical aspect.

“As environmental biologists, we look a little more on the environmental side, and he’s looking from the medical side so it’ll be fun,” Gaines said.

Gaines said Perry has been trying to get Ramos to come speak at Eastern for a couple of years.

“He brings them here to give talks and our students and faculty have benefited from it,” Gaines said.

Samantha McDaniel can be reached at 581-2812 or slmcdaniel@eiu.edu.