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The John J. Cebra Lectureship
6/29/09 - 4:00 PM - Lillie Auditorium
"The Systems Biology of Mitosis"
James Ferrell, Stanford University
Dr. James Ferrell did his undergraduate work at Williams College, studying physics, mathematics, and chemistry. He received his M.D. and Ph.D. (chemistry) degrees from Stanford and then carried out postdoctoral training in molecular and cell biology in G. Steven Martin’s lab at the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the faculty in the Dept. of Zoology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and then moved to Stanford University School of Medicine, where he is currently Professor and Chair of Chemical and Systems Biology and Professor of Biochemistry. He has drawn on this broad background to pursue both experimental and computational approaches to questions in cell signaling. Dr. Ferrell’s lab has focused mainly on two related biological processes. The first is oocyte maturation, a specialized example of the G2-M transition that has provided important insights into both mitotic and meiotic regulation. The Ferrell lab showed that the regulators of oocyte maturation, which include an ultrasensitive MAP kinase cascade and the universal M-phase regulator CDK1, constitute a bistable control system. This system integrates a number of graded environmental stimuli and converts them into a decisive, all-or-none, irreversible cell fate decision. The Ferrell lab has also made contributions to our understanding of the dynamics of the embryonic cell cycle. They have shown that the embryonic cell cycle oscillator includes a hysteretic bistable switch, and have demonstrated that this bistable trigger provides tunability and robustness to the cell cycle. Dr. Ferrell’s honors have included a Searle Scholars Award and a Howard Hughes Junior Faculty Award, and he is a past holder of the Reed-Hodgson Chair in Human Biology. He serves on the editorial boards of Current Biology, the Journal of Cell Science, the Journal of Biology, and BMC Systems Biology.
About the Cebra Lectureship:
Professor John J. Cebra was trained as an immunochemist and protein chemist during the mid 1950s through the 1960s at The Rockefeller University, St. Mary’s Hospital, London, and the Weizmann Institute, Israel. In 1961 he established his own lab in the department of microbiology, University of Florida. During the 1960s he became interested in secretory IgA, and his group established its prevalence as a product of gut plasmablasts and its valid quaternary structure. In the 1970s he and others developed many novel principles concerning the IgA system and its Ab product.
Until his death, in 2005, he was a professor of biology at the University of Pennsylvania where the Cebra group sought to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms that led to the development of specific humoral and cellular mucosal immune responses, and the influence of commensal bacteria on mucosal immunity.
Professor Cebra directed the MBL Physiology course from 1972 to 1976. He and his wife Ethel traveled abroad extensively to engage students of experimental biology in joint research projects. These visits stimulated continuing collaborative scientific interactions between the Cebra lab and various host laboratories worldwide.
Professor Cebra considered his major accomplishment to be assisting in the training of 32 graduate students and many postdoctoral fellows.
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