The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Ueli Schibler, Ph.D., professor, department of molecular biology, University of Geneva

Speaker bio(s)

This circadian timing system consists of a pacemaker in the brain’s suprachiasmatic nucleus and subsidiary oscillators in nearly all body cells. Dr. Schibler will address the issue of how the suprachiasmatic nucleus synchronizes circadian oscillators in the liver. The results indicate that the suprachiasmatic nucleus uses both indirect pathways (depending on rest-activity cycles and feeding rhythms) and more direct pathways (for example, glucocorticoid signaling) to synchronize liver clocks. Moreover, Dr. Schibler's studies suggest that hepatocyte clocks are strongly coupled between cells. Thus, circadian liver gene expression is maintained for more than a month in behaviorally arrhythmic animals with a lesioned suprachiasmatic nucleus. Dr. Schibler will also present a novel strategy, dubbed Synthetic Tandem Repeat Promoter Screening (STAR-PROM), capable of identifying in an unbiased manner the signaling pathways participating in the systemic regulation of circadian gene expression. The principle underlying this approach is the high frequency of transcription factor binding sites in random synthetic DNA. Using STAR-PROM, Dr. Schibler's lab has identified signaling pathways depending on rhythmic blood-borne signals in humans and laboratory rodents. They involve the diurnal activation of SRF- and forkhead transcription factor-dependent genes. The STAR-PROM technology can be used for the unbiased identification of signaling pathways in a wide variety of biological systems.

 

Dr. Schibler studied biology at the University of Bern and earned his Ph.D. there in 1975. From 1975 to 1978 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia. He then joined the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC), first as a junior group leader, and then as a senior group leader with tenure. In 1984 Dr. Schibler was appointed as a full professor at the University of Geneva. He is a member of several scientific associations, including EMBO, the European Academy of Sciences, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, the Faculty of 1000 and the Union of Swiss Societies in Experimental Biology. He currently serves as an academic editor for PLoS Biology and as an editorial board member for Cell, Cell Metabolism, Genes & Development, EMBO Reports and Journal of Biological Rhythms. Dr. Schibler has received the Friedrich Miescher Award of the Swiss Biochemical Society, the Cloëtta Prize of Medicine, the Otto Naegeli Prize of Medicine, the Louis Jeantet Prize of Medicine and the Aschoff-Homa Prize for Biological Rhythm Research. In 2010 he was awarded a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant.

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=3357