[bioundgrd] HHMI Craig Mello Lecture TODAY 4pm

[MacKenzie Outlund]

Hi Course 7 Majors --

Remember, your chance to hear Craig Mello's lecture - brought to you by BUSA
and HHMI -- is TODAY, March 20, 4pm in the Whitehead Auditorium.  The first
few rows will be reserved for you, so please come fill them up!

>> Dear Biology Undergraduates,
>> 
>> Each spring the Biology Undergraduate Student Association (BUSA) hosts the
>> Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Lecture as its flagship event of the
>> year.  A prominent researcher joins us to share his/her work and interact
>> with the MIT community, especially YOU, MIT undergraduates.  We are excited
>> to announce that Nobel Prize winner Dr. Craig Mello of the University of
>> Massachusetts Medical School is our distinguished speaker for 2008.
>> 
>> We, the BUSA Executive Board, would like to extend this invitation for you
>> to join us on Thursday, March 20 at 4:00 p.m. in the Whitehead Auditorium
>> (WI-110) for the 2008 HHMI Lecture.  A small reception with Dr. Mello
>> will follow the lecture.
>> 
>> An introduction to Dr. Mello's talk and brief biographical information
>> are included below:
>> 
>> ³Return to the RNAi World:  Rethinking Gene Expression, Evolution and
>> Medicine²
>>  
>> While investigating the genetic workings of the microscopic worm, C.
>> elegans, Mello and colleague Andrew Fire, PhD, of the Carnegie Institution
>> of Washington, discovered RNAi, a natural but previously unrecognized
>> process by which a certain form of RNA can be manipulated to silence‹or
>> interfere with‹the expression of a selected gene. The discovery, published
>> in the journal Nature in 1998, has had two extraordinary impacts on
>> biological science. One is as a research tool: RNAi is now the
>> state-of-the-art method by which scientists can knock out the expression of
>> specific genes in cells, to thus define the biological functions of those
>> genes. But just as important has been the finding that RNA interference is a
>> normal process of genetic regulation that takes place during development.
>> Thus, RNAi has provided not only a powerful research tool for experimentally
>> knocking out the expression of specific genes, but has opened a completely
>> new and totally unanticipated window on developmental gene regulation.  RNAi
>> is now showing promising in the clinic as a new class of gene-specific
>> therapeutics.
>> 
>> Dr. Craig C. Mello received his B.Sc. degree in Biochemistry from Brown
>> University in 1982, and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1990.
>> From 1990 to 1994 he conducted postdoctoral research at the Fred Hutchinson
>> Cancer Research Center in Seattle, WA.  He has been a member of the
>> University of Massachusetts Medical School faculty since 1995, and a Howard
>> Hughes Medical Investigator since 2000.  His pioneering research on RNAi, in
>> collaboration with Dr. Andrew Fire, has been recognized with numerous awards
>> culminating with the prestigious 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.
>> 
>> We hope to see you March 20!
>> 
>> 
>> Sincerely,
>> 
>> BUSA Executive Board
>> 
>> 
>> Andrew Glazer
>> President
>> 
>> Camille Chow
>> Vice President
>> 
>> Scott Chilton
>> Secretary
>> 
>> Dima Ter-Ovanesyan
>> Treasurer
>> 
>> Cathy Zhang
>> Officer-at-Large
>> 
> 
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