Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, PhD, author of “Why We Die: The New Science of Aging and the Quest for Immortality,” will deliver two lectures at Vanderbilt University Medical Center this month.
The subject of his Discovery Lecture, which will begin at 4 p.m. Sept. 26 in 208 Light Hall, is the role of ribosomes in initiating the translation of DNA into RNA, a precursor step to transcribing the genetic code into proteins that do the work of the cell.
At 3 p.m. Sept. 27, also in 208 Light Hall, Ramakrishnan will explore aging research, the quest for radical life extension, and the societal implications of a rapidly aging population in an Apex lecture entitled “Why We Die.” A reception will follow the lecture in the Langford Auditorium atrium.
Both lectures are sponsored by the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences.
Ramakrishnan is a group leader in the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England. A native of India, he earned his PhD in physics from Ohio University in 1976, then switched to biology.
He began investigating ribosomes as a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University, worked as a staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, and was a professor of biochemistry at the University of Utah before moving to Cambridge in 1999.
In 2000, Ramakrishnan and his colleagues determined the atomic structure of the 30S ribosomal subunit.
For this discovery, which helped reveal how ribosomes “read” the genetic code, and which has been important in the production of antibiotics, he was awarded the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which he shared with Yale biochemist Thomas Steitz, PhD, and Israeli crystallographer Ada Yonath, PhD.
In addition to “Why We Die,” published this year, Ramakrishnan is the author of a memoir titled “Gene Machine: The Race to Decipher the Secrets of the Ribosome,” published in 2018.
For information about the Discovery and Apex lecture series, visit www.vumc.org/discovery-lecture-series/upcoming-lectures, and https://medschool.vanderbilt.edu/basic-sciences/communications/events.
