VOLUME 12, NUMBER 22 • MAY 18, 2001

Lambowitz to Give Next Week's Friday Lecture

Alan Lambowitz, a professor and director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas at Austin, will present the Friday lecture next week (May 25). His topic will be "Group II Intron Mobility via Reverse Splicing into DNA and Its Potential Applications in Targeted Gene Disruption and Site-Specific DNA Insertion."

Lambowitz's laboratory studies gene expression, RNA splicing, catalytic RNAs and retroviral genetic elements, including possible ancestors of the AIDS and leukemia viruses. They recently discovered a novel mechanism for site-specific DNA insertion used by

Alan Lambowitz, a former research associate at The Rockefeller University, is the director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology at the University of Texas at Austin.

autocatalytic group II introns. The nature of this mechanism suggests that group II introns might be used in new approaches for genetic engineering and gene therapy, applicable to a wide variety of diseases.

Lambowitz's research interests include mechanisms of RNA catalysis, how proteins assist formation of RNA structure, mechanisms involved in intron mobility, the evolution of introns and splicing mechanisms, the origin of retroviruses and reverse transcription, and the development of novel methods for functional genomics and gene therapy.

In addition to serving as director of the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Lambowitz is also the Mr. and Mrs. A. Frank Smith, and Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Regents Chairs in Molecular Biology, as well as a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and of molecular genetics and microbiology at the University of Texas at Austin.

He received his B.S. in chemistry from Brooklyn College, City University of New York, and his Ph.D. from Yale University. He was a research associate at The Rockefeller University, in David Luck's Laboratory of Cell Biology from 1973 to 1975.

Among his many awards, he received an NIH MERIT Award in 1993 and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995.

Lambowitz's talk begins at 3:45 p.m. in Caspary Auditorium and is preceded by a tea in Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Lounge. All are welcome.