How Did Our Adaptive Immune System Evolve?
Event Details
- Type
- Friday Lecture Series
- Speaker(s)
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Max Cooper, M.D., professor, Emory Vaccine Center and Emory Center for AIDS Research, Emory University School of Medicine
- Speaker bio(s)
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An alternative adaptive immune system has been defined in lampreys and hagfish, with which humans last shared a common ancestor approximately 500 million years ago. These jawless vertebrates use leucine-rich repeat gene segments instead of immunoglobulin V(D)J gene segments to assemble genes encoding very large repertoires of variable lymphocyte receptors (VLR). Lampreys have three VLR loci: VLRA, VLRB and VLRC. Mature VLRA and VLRC genes are assembled and expressed by sublineages of T-like cells. Mature VLRB genes are assembled and expressed by B-like cells, clones of which respond to immunization with proliferation and differentiation into VLRB antibody-secreting plasmacytes. Dr. Cooper will present evolutionary implications of the differences and similarities between the AIS in jawless and jawed vertebrates.
Dr. Cooper earned his medical degree at Tulane University Medical School, and completed his pediatric residency there. He has held academic positions at Tulane, the University of Minnesota and the Pasteur Institute, among others. He was professor of pediatrics and microbiology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham from 1967 to 2008. He was also the director of the division of developmental and clinical immunology there. Dr. Cooper was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator from 1988 to 2006. He joined the faculty of Emory University in 2008 as GRA Eminent Scholar and professor of pathology and laboratory medicine. Dr. Cooper is a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and the Royal Society of Medicine. He is the recipient of the Samuel J. Meltzer Founder’s Award of the Society for Experimental Biology and Medicine (1966), the Sandoz Prize in Immunology (1990), the 3M Life Sciences Award (1990), the American College of Physicians Science Award (1994), Lifetime Achievement Awards from the American Association of Immunologists (2000) and the Clinical Immunology Society (2004), the Award for Distinction in Biomedical Research from the Association of American Medical Colleges (2008), Avery-Landsteiner Prize (2008), the Robert Koch Prize (2010) and the AAI Excellence in Mentoring Award (2012).
- Open to
- Public
- Reception
- Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge
- Contact
- Alena Powell
- Phone
- (212) 327-7745
- Sponsor
-
Alena Powell
(212) 327-7745
apowell@rockefeller.edu