Nobel laureate set for Discovery Lecture

Nobel laureate set for Discovery Lecture

Nobel laureate Eric Wieschaus, Ph.D., renowned for his studies of the genetic control of early embryonic development, will deliver the next Discovery Lecture on Thursday, March 8.

Eric Wieschaus, Ph.D.

His lecture, which is also the Abraham Flexner Lecture in Biomedical Science and the Cell and Developmental Biology Distinguished Faculty Lecture, will begin at 4 p.m. in 208 Light Hall.

Wieschaus, Squibb Professor of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, will discuss “The mechanics of cell shape change during early development in Drosophila.”

Wieschaus’s laboratory is interested in understanding the changes in cell size, shape and position that occur during embryonic development. Using fruit fly embryos, his group is following genes that are “turned on” to control transitions from one configuration or cell type to another.

Wieschaus earned a Ph.D. in Biology from Yale University and completed part of his dissertation research at the University of Basel, Switzerland, with Walter Gehring, Ph.D., a leader in the field of Drosophila genetics and development. Wieschaus is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He shared the 1995 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

The Department of Cell and Developmental Biology and the Epithelial Cell Biology Center are sponsoring Wieschaus’s lecture. For a complete schedule of the Discovery Lecture series and archived video of previous lectures, go to www.mc.vanderbilt.edu/discoveryseries.