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Friday Evening Lecture Series
07/30/04
Tiny RNAs as Powerful Regulators of Gene Expression: Insights from Protozoan Parasites
Elisabetta Ullu, Yale University
Introduction by Stephen Hajduk, Director, Global Infectious Diseases Program, Marine Biological Laboratory
Lecture Abstract:
The survival and functioning of all living organisms from bacteria to man depend on rigorous mechanisms for the maintenance of genetic information and for the control of gene expression. In recent years, our view of how eukaryotic organisms defend themselves from the damage of molecular parasites, namely viruses and mobile elements, and of how gene expression is controlled has changed dramatically. Unexpectedly, small RNAs, only 20-25 nucleotides long, have been recognized as essential components of novel cellular machineries whose function is to destroy nucleic acid invaders or to silence genes. Small RNA-mediated gene silencing mechanisms have deep roots in the evolutionary history of eukaryotes, and are being exploited as tools to analyze gene function and as potential therapeutic means for human diseases.
Elisabetta Ullu, Ph.D. is a Professor of Medicine (Infectious Diseases) and Cell Biology at Yale University. She earned her Ph.D. in 1973 at the University of Rome in Italy, and worked as a Research Scientist there before becoming a Postdoctoral Fellow with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany from 1978 to 1982. Dr. Ullu has worked at Yale University since 1985, and has taught since 1987. Among her many professional accomplishments, Dr. Ullu has been a member of the Genome and of the Tropical Medicine and Parasitology Study Sections of the National Institutes of Health , is Co-Director of the NIH training grant in Molecular Parasitology since 2001, is an Associate Editor for the Annual Review of Microbiology, a member of the editorial board for Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology and of the review board for the Ellison Biomedical Foundation. At the MBL, Dr. Ullu has been the organizer of the Molecular Parasitology meeting from 1995 to 1997, and the 2002 Co-Director of the Biology of Parasitism Course. Dr. Ullu has received several academic honors, including the 1987-1989 New Faculty Award from Yale University's MacArthur Center for Molecular Parasitology, the 1996-2001 Burroughs Wellcome Scholar Award in Molecular Parasitology, the 2001-2005 Senior Scholar in Global Infectious Diseases from the Ellison Medical Foundation, and a 2003 Summer Fellowship at the MBL.
Stephen L. Hajduk is the Director of the Marine Biological Laboratory's Global Infectious Diseases Program and Professor of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology at Brown University. Dr. Hajduk received his B.S. from the University of Georgia in 1976 and his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Glasgow, UK, in 1980. He was a visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam in 1979, and a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University from 1980 to 1983 before joining the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Hajduk was promoted to full-professor in 1991 and was named founding director of the Center for Community Outreach Development in 1998. Dr. Hajduk's research on African sleeping sickness has been featured in Science, Nature, and Cell and reported in BBC News, BBC International News, and Associated Press Service. He has served on Scientific Review Boards for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), the National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease, the National Research Council, the Wellcome Trust (UK) and the Burroughs Wellcome Advisory Board for Infectious Diseases. He has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Parasitology International, Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology, and was editor for Experimental Parasitology (2002-2004). Hajduk is a Burroughs Wellcome Scholar in Molecular Parasitology and a Fogarty International Scholar. He is the Principal Investigator on three active NIH research grants and has been Principal Investigator on a number of active teaching and outreach grants from NIH, NSF, HHMI, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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