Lupus
and Snurps: Bench to Bedside and Back Again
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Anita Tuvin Schlechter Auditorium, 7:00 p.m.
This talk will trace the origins of our understanding of how small
cellular particles contribute to the critical process of splicing and relate
this knowledge to today’s quest for treatment of splicing diseases, such as
Lupus.
The Joseph Priestley Award recipient is chosen by a different
science department each year. This year the recipient was selected by the
Department of Biology. The event is sponsored by The Clarke Forum for
Contemporary Issues and Student Senate and co-sponsored by and the Departments
of Biology, Chemistry, Earth Sciences, Psychology, Physics & Astronomy and
Environmental Studies.
Biography (provided by the speaker)
Joan Steitz is a Sterling Professor of Molecular Biophysics and
Biochemistry; and Investigator at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Yale
University.
Steitz earned her B.S. in chemistry from Antioch College in 1963.
Significant findings from her work emerged as early as 1967, when her Harvard
PhD thesis with Jim Watson examined the test-tube assembly of a ribonucleic
acid (RNA) bacteriophage (antibacterial virus) known as R17.
Steitz spent the next three years in postdoctoral studies at the
Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England,
where she used early methods for determining the biochemical sequence of RNA to
study how ribosomes know where to initiate protein synthesis on bacterial
mRNAs. In 1970, she was appointed assistant professor of molecular biophysics
and biochemistry at Yale, becoming full professor in 1978. At Yale, she
established a laboratory dedicated to the study of RNA structure and function.
In 1979, Steitz and her colleagues described a group of cellular particles
called small nuclear ribonucleoproteins (snRNPs), a breakthrough in
understanding how RNA is spliced. Subsequently, her laboratory has defined the
structures and functions of other noncoding RNPs, such as those that guide the
modification of ribosomal RNAs and several produced by transforming
herpesviruses. Today, her studies of noncoding RNAs include microRNAs.
Steitz is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute,
a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American
Philosophical Society, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Institute of
Medicine. Her many honors include the U.S. Steel Foundation Award in Molecular
Biology (1982), the National Medal of Science (1986), the Lewis S. Rosenstiel
Award (2002), the FASEB Excellence in Science Award (2003), the RNA Society
Lifetime Achievement Award (2004), E.B. Wilson Medal (2005), Gairdner
Foundation International Award (2006), and Albany Medical Center Prize in
Medicine and Biomedical Research (2008), [shared with Elizabeth
Blackburn], Harden Jubilee Medal, British Biochemical Society (2009), The
Robert J. and Claire Pasarow Foundation 23rd Annual
Medical Research Award for Extraordinary Achievement in Cancer Research (2011),
The Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2012). She is the recipient of 15 honorary
degrees.
Joseph Priestley Lecture
The Priestley Award is presented by Dickinson College in memory of Joseph
Priestley, discoverer of oxygen, to a distinguished scientist whose work has
contributed to the welfare of humanity. The Priestley Award, first presented in
1952, recognizes outstanding achievement and contribution to our understanding
of science and the world.