The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

3:45 p.m.: James Rothman, Ph.D., Fergus F. Wallace Professor of Biomedical Sciences and Chemistry; professor and chair, department of cell biology; and professor of chemistry, Yale School of Medicine

Speaker bio(s)

Information is passed between nerve cells and synaptic connections by neurotransmitters, which must be released synchronously with electrical activity. Synchronous release is due to just three proteins. SNARE proteins fuse the synaptic vesicles which store neurotransmitters at nerve endings with the nearby nerve surface membrane. Complexin acts as a clamp to block SNAREs halfway through the fusion process by cross-linking them. The calcium ion sensor Synaptotagmin reverses the clamp and facilitates fusion but only when it binds calcium, which enters the pre-synaptic nerve in response to the electrical signal, synchronizing release to electrical action potentials. Dr. Rothman’s recent results provide a structural biochemical basis for this vital physiological process.

 

Dr. Rothman is renowned for discovering the molecular machinery responsible for transfer of materials among compartments within cells. In so doing, Dr. Rothman provided a unified conceptual framework for understanding such diverse and important processes as the release of insulin into the blood, communication between nerve cells in the brain, and the entry of viruses to infect cells.

 

Dr. Rothman received his Ph.D. in biological chemistry from Harvard in 1976 and was a student at Harvard Medical School from 1971 to 1973. From 1976 to 1978, he was a fellow in the department of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was a faculty member at Stanford University from 1978 to 1988, at Princeton University from 1988 to 1991 and at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center from 1991 to 2004. Prior to coming to Yale in 2008, Dr. Rothman was the Wu Professor of Chemical Biology in the department of physiology and cellular biophysics and director of the Sulzberger Genome Center at Columbia University.

 

Dr. Rothman has received the King Faisal International Prize for Science, the Gairdner Foundation International Award, the Lounsbery Award, the Heineken Foundation Prize, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, the Lasker Basic Science Award, the Kavli Prize for Neuroscience and the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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=3584