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Friday Evening Lecture Series
06/25/10
Lillie Auditorium, 8:00 PM
Glassman Lecture - "MicroRNA Pathways in Worms and Human"
Victor Ambros, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Introduced by Dr. Thoru Pederson
Press Release
Lecture Abstract:
We employ the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model for studying the genetic programming of animal development. Among the genes that function as important regulators of development in this animal are genes encoding microRNAs, small RNAs that regulate the production of protein from specific messenger RNA targets. MicroRNAs are evolutionarily ancient, and some of the same microRNAs that control development in C. elegans are also present in humans, where they appear to regulate processes related to cancer and other diseases.
Dr. Victor Ambros is the Silverman Professor of Natural Science at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He studies the genetic regulatory mechanisms that control animal development, in particular the molecules that function during animal development to ensure the proper timing of developmental events. In 1993, Dr. Ambros’s lab identified the first microRNA, single-stranded RNA molecules that play a critical role in gene regulation. Since then, the role of microRNAs in development has been a major focus of his research.
Dr. Ambros completed his undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as his postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. During graduate school, he worked with David Baltimore, a co-recipient of the 1975 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
In 1985, after completing postdoctoral research at MIT in the lab of H. Robert Horvitz, who shared the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Dr. Ambros joined the faculty at Harvard University where he remained until 1992. He served on the faculty of Dartmouth College from 1992 to 2001, and was a professor at Dartmouth Medical School from 2001 to 2007 before joining the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 2008.
Dr. Ambros was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2007 has received numerous honors and awards including the 2008 Lasker Award (with David Baulcombe, and Gary Ruvkun) and the 2008 Gairdner Foundation International Award.
Dr. Thoru Pederson will introduce Dr. Ambros. Dr. Pederson is the Vitold Arnett Professor of Cell Biology in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He received both his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Syracuse University and did his post-doctoral work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Dr. Pederson joined the Worcester Foundation for Biomedical Research as a staff scientist in 1971. In 1985 he was named the Foundation’s President and Scientific Director and in 1997 he merged the institute with the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Dr. Pederson’s research is on the functional organization of the nucleus, with emphasis on the synthesis, dynamics and localization of RNA, including microRNAs with unanticipated locations within the nucleus. Dr. Pederson has a long association with the MBL. He was a student in the Embryology course, was on the faculty of the Physiology course for 7 years, was a member of the MBL committee on Governance, and chairs the MBL’s Committee on Research Awards.
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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