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Friday Evening Lecture Series
08/03/07
Glassman Lecture
Hormonally-Active Pollutants: Where Do They Come From And What Can They Do?
Dr. Joan Ruderman, Harvard Medical School
Introduction by Dr. Avram Hershko
Lecture Abstract:
Many pesticides, herbicides, and fungicides are now known to mimic the actions of estrogen, or interfere with the actions of hormones like testosterone, in many organisms, including mammals. Components such as bisphenol A (BPA) or phthalates, which leach of out of two kinds of commonly used plastics, also have hormone-like effects. BPA was originally developed as a synthetic estrogen in the 1930s; it is now used to make polycarbonate plastic and resins that line certain types of food containers. Phthalates, which interfere with the actions of male hormones, are major components of PVC-based plastics (such as shower curtains and medical tubing); phthalates are also added to most kinds of personal care products. Accumulating work carried out with mice and rats shows that brief pre-natal exposure to environmentally relevant low concentrations of BPA or phthalates can have dramatic and adverse effects on subsequent fetal development, adult behaviors, and the development of breast or prostate cancers in later life. Synthetic estrogens, which are used for birth control or hormone replacement therapy, are commonly found in treated waters released from sewage treatment plants in concentrations that can interfere with the reproduction of fish and other aquatic species. Dr. Ruderman will discuss some of the key studies that led to these discoveries and some of the larger issues that are emerging from this work.
Dr. Joan Ruderman is in the Department of Cell Biology at Harvard Medical School. She received a B.A. in Biology from Barnard College. She went on to M.I.T., where she did her Ph.D. work on the molecular biology of sea urchin early development in the lab of Paul R. Gross, who would later serve as director of the MBL. She stayed at M.I.T. for postdoctoral work in the lab of Mary Lou Pardue, where she worked on mRNA polyadenylation in amphibian eggs. Ruderman then joined the faculty in the Anatomy Department at Harvard Medical School, where she began working on translational control and the cell division cycle, and later moved to Duke University as a member of the Zoology Department. She returned to Harvard in 1989, where she is now the Marion V. Nelson Professor of Cell Biology. Ruderman first came to the MBL as a student in the Embryology Course in 1974 after finishing her Ph.D., returned as an instructor and later Co-Director of the Embryology Course, and then spent many summers working at the bench as a Summer Investigator. She has served on several MBL Corporation and Trustee committees, including Education, Fellowships, Housing and Daycare, Campus Planning, Finance and Investment, and Long Range Planning. Her scientific contributions have been recognized by election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1991), the National Academy of Sciences (1998) and, most recently, as a recipient of the 2007 NYU/Dart Award in Biotechnology. She has also received student mentoring awards from Harvard Medical School and Harvard University. Currently she is a member of the MBL Board of Trustees and the Medical Advisory Board of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Dr. Avram Hershko will introduce Dr. Ruderman. Dr. Hershko is a Distinguished Professor at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Dr. Hershko is a Distinguished Professor at the Rappaport Faculty of Medicine of the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and an Adjunct Senior Scientist at the MBL. From 1965 to 1967, Dr. Hershko served as a physician in the Israel Defense Forces. He was a postdoctoral fellow with Gordon Tomkins at the University of California, San Francisco from 1969 to 1972. Dr. Hershko joined the faculty of the Technion as an Associate Professor in 1972 and was named a Professor in 1980. Dr. Hershko shared the 2004 Nobel Prize for Chemistry with his former graduate student Aaron Ciechanover and his colleague Irwin Rose for their joint discovery of the ubiquitin system that degrades proteins in cells. He has been a summer investigator at the MBL since 1991. Dr. Hershko was drawn to the MBL when he became interested in learning more about the role that ubiquitin plays in the cell division cycle. Working with Joan Ruderman and others, he later identified a specific ubiquitin ligating complex that "targets cyclin B for degradation at the end of mitosis"-the final phase of cell division.
About the Glassman Lecture:
The Glassman Lecture is held in honor of the late Harold N. Glassman who left a generous bequest to the MBL which resulted in the establishment of the Harold N. Glassman fund, the income from which is used to support an annual Friday Evening Lecture on an important topic in biological research. |
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