Nobel laureate Andrew Fire, Ph.D., will deliver the next Flexner Discovery Lecture on Thursday, Jan. 24.
His talk, “Biological Responses to Foreign Information,” will begin at 4 p.m. in 208 Light Hall.
Fire is a professor of Pathology and Genetics at Stanford University School of Medicine. He and Craig Mello, Ph.D., were awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for their discovery of RNA interference (RNAi) — a process that allows cells to selectively silence certain genes.
RNAi is one way that cells recognize and respond to foreign information, particularly nucleic acids. Other responses include RNA and protein effectors such as siRNAs, miRNAs, antibodies and T cell receptors. These cellular effectors participate in our ability to control infection and pathogenesis, and they shape the invading pathogen’s response.
Fire will discuss how his team is using sequence-based analysis to define and track immune responses to model interventions and infection.
Fire is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine.
The Department of Cell and Developmental Biology is sponsoring Fire’s lecture. He is the CDB Distinguished Faculty Speaker.
For a complete schedule of the Flexner Discovery Lecture series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.
