Thomas P. Sakmar, M.D.
Acting President
Professor and Head,
Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry,
Associate Investigator, Howard Hughes Medical Institute
View the Lecture Presentation.
View Part One
In the last year, we've read in newspapers and seen on TV numerous
reports of the sequencing of the genomes of humans and other species. But what, exactly,
is a genome? Rockefeller University Professor Thomas P. Sakmar will talk about genomes
and how those of bacteria, flies, frogs and humans compare: Why are humans so much
more complex than flies, which have only half as many genes as we do? What is evolution,
and what does it mean at the molecular level? As organisms evolve to become more
complex, they devote more and more DNA to encoding the protein building blocks of
signal transduction networks--biochemical pathways that link detection of an external
event to a cellular response. In the human genome, the largest category of genes
build up and regulate signal transduction networks.
View Part Two
How does light stimulate the retina to initiate vision? How
does a hormone trigger a response? How does HIV hijack cell-surface receptors to
enter a cell and cause an infection? The common theme that ties together all these
processes is signal transduction. Molecular switches interact with receptors to turn
enzyme cascades on or off. Many human diseases are caused by defects in signal transduction,
and many drugs target signal transduction proteins. Using the visual system as a
model, Dr. Sakmar will explain how signal transduction in the nervous system works,
and how receptors receive signals involved in many of the body's processes to turn
on specific signaling cascades within cells.
Dr. Sakmar is professor and head of the Laboratory of Molecular
Biology and Biochemistry at The Rockefeller University where he is also acting president.
He was raised on the east side of Detroit, Michigan, where he attended neighborhood
public and parochial schools. He received his A.B. degree in chemistry from the University
of Chicago and his M.D. degree from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of
Medicine. During school breaks he worked initially as a telephone cable splicer and
an arc welder until landing research positions at the University of Chicago and the
Food and Drug Administration in Bethesda, Maryland. While attending a special biophysics
school in France in 1979, he was inspired by Martin Rodbell, who had just coined
the term "signal transduction" and who went on to win the Nobel Prize in
1994.
Dr. Sakmar completed a medical residency at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of H. Gobind Khorana at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During his postdoctoral research training, Dr. Sakmar was among the first scientists to study the function of a newly discovered class of cell-surface receptors using techniques of molecular biology. Using rhodopsin, the receptor for dim light in the retina, as a model system, Dr. Sakmar has continued to study the dynamics of receptor activation-the conformational changes that rapidly occur when rhodopsin absorbs a photon of light or a receptor binds to a hormone. Dr. Sakmar also has made major contributions to understanding the chemical basis for color vision.
Dr. Sakmar also is an associate investigator of the Howard
Hughes Medical Institute in their Neuroscience Program and a senior scholar of the
Ellison Medical Foundation.
John D. Rockefeller founded The Rockefeller University in 1901
as The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, the first U.S. biomedical research
center. Rockefeller scientists have made significant achievements, including the
discovery that DNA is the carrier of genetic information. The university has ties
to 21 Nobel laureates, including Paul Greengard, who received the award in 2000 for
his elucidation of the chemical cascade touched off by dopamine and other neurotransmitters,
and Günter Blobel, who received the award in 1999 for his research on protein
trafficking in the cell, both in Physiology or Medicine.
The Alfred E. Mirsky Christmas Lectures on Science were established in 1959 by Dr. Mirsky, a biochemist and Rockefeller University librarian. Dr. Mirsky modeled these lectures on a popular series of science lectures for children, pioneered in London in 1827 by Michael Faraday--known as the greatest experimenter in the history of science.