The spring Flexner Discovery Lecture series wraps up on Thursday, April 26, with a presentation by Terry Orr-Weaver, PhD, professor of Biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Orr-Weaver, who is also a member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, will discuss how DNA replication is regulated during development to control cell size and gene copy number.
The lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in room 208 Light Hall. It is sponsored by the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and the Department of Biological Sciences.
Orr-Weaver and her team study the processes that control cell division and cell size during development. In the fruit fly nervous system, large increases in glial cell size — mediated by a modification of normal cell division to increase DNA content — are used to ensure the coating of nerve cell axons and the maintenance of the blood-brain barrier.
Orr-Weaver is an American Cancer Society Research Professor and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and received the FASEB Excellence in Science Award in 2013.
For a complete schedule of the Flexner Discovery Lecture series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.
