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Friday Evening Lecture Series
08/07/09
Lillie Auditorium, 8:00 PM
Glassman Lecture
"Gene Regulatory Networks: the Genomic Code for Embryonic Development"
Eric H. Davidson, California Institute of Technology
Introduced by Gary Borisy
Lecture Abstract:
We have all known intuitively since we were small that since each type of creature on Earth gives rise to an adult of the same species, the process of embryonic development must be a genetic property of the species. In a few cases we have discovered the actual genomic code that controls embryogenesis, and this lecture is about the best understood example: the sea urchin embryo. You will see that the genomic program for development of this embryo has the form of a network of interacting genes, which acts as the “brain” for the whole process, controlling all its downstream functions. The linkages of which the network is composed are directly encoded in the A’s, C’s, G’s, and T’s of the sea urchin DNA, just as our development is directly encoded in the regulatory sequence of our DNA. The beauty and elegance of the logic transactions the network encodes, as genes are turned on and off in the developing embryo, is demanded by the beauty and elegance of the biological process we see in the microscope. The parts of the network we know the most about literally explain why all the events that we can see happen as they do. Also, since evolution of form means change in the developmental process, the key to the evolution of animals lies in conservation and alteration of developmental gene regulatory network structure, driven by never ending processes of genomic change.
Eric H. Davidson is the Norman Chandler Professor of Cell Biology at the California Institute of Technology, where he has been on the faculty since 1971. Dr. Davidson earned his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1958 and Ph.D. from Rockefeller University in 1963, where he remained on the faculty until 1971. Dr. Davidson has served as a director of the MBL’s Embryology course for a total of 15 years. He is presently co-director of MBL’s new Gene Regulatory Networks course. Dr. Davidson has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 1985, and has written five books and over 350 research, theory and review papers on mechanisms of development and evolution.
Dr. Gary Borisy will introduce Dr. Davidson. Dr. Borisy became the MBL’s 13th Director and 3rd CEO in 2006. Previously he was Associate Vice President for Research and the Leslie B. Arey Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. After serving a postdoctoral fellowship at the MRC in Cambridge, England, Dr. Borisy joined the faculty of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, rising through the professional ranks to Chairman of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Perlman-Bascom Professor of Life Sciences, before moving to Northwestern in 2000. Dr. Borisy is the author of more than 200 papers, the editor of two books, and has received numerous professional honors, including an NIH Merit award and the Carl Zeiss award from the German Society for Cell Biology. In April, 2009 he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Borisy has served as president of the American Society for Cell Biology and is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the biotech company CombinatoRx, located in Cambridge, MA.
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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