The rockefeller university

Event Details

Type

Friday Lecture Series

Speaker(s)

Victor Ambros, Ph.D., Silverman Professor of Natural Science, co-director, RNA Therapeutics Institute, University of Massachusetts Medical School

Speaker bio(s)

Dr. Ambros and his colleagues are interested in the genetic regulatory mechanisms that control animal development, and in particular the molecules that function during animal development to ensure the proper timing of developmental events. They have primarily employed the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system for studying the function of regulators of developmental timing, which in C. elegans are known as the "heterochronic genes," in reference to the remarkable changes in relative timing of developmental events that are elicited by mutations in these genes. The heterochronic genes comprise a set of interrelated regulatory pathways that include proteins that regulate the transcription of other genes and also a class of small RNA, known as microRNAs, that regulates the production of protein by the messenger RNAs of specific target genes. Much of the research in the Ambros lab in recent years has been aimed at understanding how microRNAs are integrated into broader regulatory networks related to animal development and human disease, and at uncovering the molecular mechanisms for how microRNAs exert their effects on gene expression.

Dr. Ambros received a S.B from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975. He did his graduate research from 1976 to 1979 with David Baltimore at MIT, studying poliovirus genome structure and replication. He began to study the genetic pathways controlling developmental timing in the nematode C. elegans as a postdoc in H. Robert Horvitz's lab at MIT, and continued those studies while on the faculty of Harvard (1984-1992), Dartmouth (1992-2007), and the University of Massachusetts Medical School (2008-present). In 1993, members of the Ambros lab identified the first microRNA, the product of lin-4, a heterochronic gene of C. elegans. Since then, the role of microRNAs in development has been a major focus of his research.

A member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Dr. Ambros has received a number of prestigious awards, including the Massry Prize, the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize and the Dickson Prize in Medicine in 2009, the Gairdner Foundation International Award and the Albert Lasker Prize for Basic Medical Research in 2008, and the Lewis S. Rosenstiel Award in Basic Medical Science in 2006.

Joshua Lederberg was president emeritus of The Rockefeller University. A graduate of Stuyvesant High School, Columbia College and Yale University, he discovered bacterial conjugation, a mechanism of DNA transfer in bacteria, and earned the Nobel Prize in 1958, at age 33. He came to Rockefeller in 1978 as its fifth president and the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Scholar, serving until 1990. Throughout his career, Dr. Lederberg served as scientific adviser to world leaders and headed influential committees and policy studies. This lecture on molecular genetics was endowed by the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Foundation following Dr. Lederberg's retirement in 1990. Dr. Lederberg died in 2008.

Open to

Public

Host

Sohail Tavazoie

Reception

Refreshments, 3:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m., Abby Lounge

Contact

Robert Houghtaling

Phone

(212) 327-8072

Sponsor

Robert Houghtaling
(212) 327-8072
rhoughtali@rockefeller.edu

Readings

http://librarynews.rockefeller.edu/?p=2597