The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Gary Ruvkun, Ph.D., Hans-Hermann Schoene Distinguished Investigator and professor, department of genetics molecular biology, Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital

Speaker bio(s)

Converging TGF-β and insulin-like neuroendocrine signaling pathways control a developmental decision that C. elegans makes between larval arrest at the dauer stage, generally induced by crowding and stresses, or development to the fertile adult stage. Dauer arrest in nematodes is a specific example of the much more general phenomenon of diapause arrest, a developmental or reproductive arrest observed, for example, in overwintering insects or amphibians or fish in desiccated lakes, induced by environment. Other developmental arrest points are also “programmed” responses to a deficiency in a core cellular function that in the natural world would be caused by toxins. A genetic defect in the core cellular components is “read” as a toxic or microbial attack and induces aversive behaviors as well as anti-bacterial and detoxification genes. The Ruvkun lab has discerned new genetic pathways that surveil the ribosome, mitochondria or proteasome and couple to the induction of innate immunity and detoxification pathways. Using a panel of GFP-fused xenobiotic and immune response genes, they have identified protective pathways upregulated by gene inactivations that disrupt core cellular pathways. Variation in human cellular surveillance and endocrine pathways controlling behavior, detoxification and immunity selected by past toxin or microbial interactions could underlie aberrant responses to foods, medicines and microbes.

 

Dr. Ruvkun’s research explores two major themes:  regulation by microRNA genes and other tiny RNAs, and control of longevity and metabolism by insulin and other endocrine pathways. Dr. Ruvkun received his Ph.D. in biophysics from Harvard University in 1982, where he was a member of Fred Ausubel’s lab. He was a junior fellow at Harvard and postdoc in Bob Horvitz’s lab at MIT and Walter Gilbert’s lab at Harvard from 1982 to 1985, when he accepted a faculty position at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Ruvkun is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His is a recipient of the Rosenstiel Award, the Warren Triennial Prize, the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Gairdner International Award, the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research, the Louisa Horwitz Prize, Massry Prize, the Dan David Prize for Aging research, the Ipsen Foundation Longevity Prize, the Paul Janssen Award and the Wolf Prize.

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

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=3570