April 23, 2009
Science in Medicine Lecture on April 23
Elizabeth Blackburn, the Morris Herzstein Endowed Professor of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California, San Francisco, will give the Science in Medicine Lecture, from noon to 1 p.m., Thursday, April 23, in Hognes Auditorium, Health Sciences Building. Her lecture is titled Roles of Telomeres and Telomerase in Human Health and Disease.
Blackburn is a leader in the area of telomere and telomerase research. She discovered the molecular nature of telomeres — the ends of eukaryotic chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving the genetic information — and she discovered the ribonucleoprotein enzyme, telomerase. Blackburn and her research team at the University of California, San Francisco, are working with various cells including human cells, with the goal of understanding telomerase and telomere biology.
Blackburn earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in science from the University of Melbourne in Australia, and her doctoral degree from the University of Cambridge in England. She did her postdoctoral work in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Yale.
In 1978, Blackburn joined the faculty at the University of California at Berkeley in the Department of Molecular Biology. In 1990, she joined the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the UC San Francisco, where she served as Department Chair from 1993 to 1999. Blackburn is currently a faculty member in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at UCSF. She is also a Non-Resident Fellow of the Salk Institute.
This lecture is open to all faculty, staff and students. No registration is required. For information regarding the lecture series, please contact Denise Barnes at barnem@u.washington.edu or visit the 2008-2009 Science in Medicine website at http://www.uwmedicine.org/Research/ResearchTrainingAndSeminars/SIM.htm.
