41st Bampton Lectures in America
April 30 and May 1, 2019
Please note that there are two separate lectures, one at the Columbia University Irving Medical Center and one on the Morningside Campus.
Register here for April 30th @Alumni Auditorium, CUIMC
Register here for May 1st @The Italian Academy
Lecture #1: Genome editors and inhibitors from the CRISPR family tree
April 30, 2019 at 5:00pm
Alumni Auditorium, Columbia University Medical Center
650 W 168th Street
Jennifer A. Doudna, University of California, Berkeley; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Gladstone Institutes, UCSF
Fundamental research to understand how bacteria fight viral infections uncovered programmable proteins that detect and cut specific DNA sequences. These protein-RNA complexes constitute a powerful toolkit for genome editing in animals, plants and bacteria. I will present current research into the molecular mechanisms of CRISPR-Cas enzymes, including recent work on CRISPR-CasX and anti-CRISPR inhibitors. I will also describe how mechanistic insights inform the application of genome editing in biomedicine and agriculture.
Reception to follow.
Please RSVP here.
Lecture #2: CRISPR Biology and Technology: the Future of Genome Editing
May 1, 2019 at 11:30am
Italian Academy for Advanced Studies
1161 Amsterdam Ave (between 118th and 120th Streets)
Jennifer A. Doudna, University of California, Berkeley; Howard Hughes Medical Institute; Gladstone Institutes, UCSF
Fundamental research to understand how bacteria fight viral infections uncovered programmable proteins that detect and cut specific DNA sequences. In collaboration with Emmanuelle Charpentier’s laboratory, we determined how the enzyme Cas9, which is part of CRISPR-Cas adaptive bacterial immunity, can be harnessed as a powerful technology to alter genomic sequences in cells. This created a simple, precise and widely adaptable technology for genome editing – changing or regulating the genetic material – in any cell or organism. Current research is exploring the diversity of CRISPR-Cas systems in microbes and developing genome editing for biomedical and agricultural applications. I will also discuss the ethical and societal implications of genome editing.
Reception to follow.
Please RSVP here.
As an internationally renowned professor of Chemistry and Molecular and Cell Biology at U.C. Berkeley, Jennifer Doudna and her colleagues rocked the research world in 2012 by describing a simple way of editing the DNA of any organism using an RNA-guided protein found in bacteria. This technology, called CRISPR-Cas9, has opened the floodgates of possibility for human and non-human applications of gene editing, including assisting researchers in the fight against HIV, sickle cell disease and muscular dystrophy. Doudna is an Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Instituteand a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Inventors and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a Foreign Member of the Royal Society, and has received many other honors including the Kavli Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences, the Heineken Prize, the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award and the Japan Prize. She is the co-author with Sam Sternberg of “A Crack in Creation”, a personal account of her research and the societal and ethical implications of gene editing.
Henry T. Greely (BA ’74) specializes in the ethical, legal, and social implications of new biomedical technologies, particularly those related to neuroscience, genetics, or stem cell research. He frequently serves as an advisor on California, national, and international policy issues. He is chair of California’s Human Stem Cell Research Advisory Committee, a member of the Advisory Council of the NIH’s National Institute for General Medical Sciences, a member of the Committee on Science, Technology, and Law of the National Academies, a member of the Neuroscience Forum of the Institute of Medicine, and served from 2007-2010 as co-director of the Law and Neuroscience Project, funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Professor Greely chairs the steering committee for the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics and directs both the law school’s Center for Law and the Biosciences and the Stanford Program in Neuroscience and Society. In 2007 Professor Greely was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Greely is also a professor (by courtesy) of genetics at Stanford School of Medicine. He received the University’s Richard W. Lyman Prize in 2013.
Founded in 1948, the Bampton Lectures in America are a series of biennial lectures given by prominent scholars in the fields of theology, science, art, and medicine. Established through a bequest from Ada Byron Bampton Tremaine, the Lectures are given at periodic intervals in the fields of religion, science, art, and medicine. In accordance with the wishes of Ms Tremaine, they are delivered to a general audience and subsequently published. Included among those who have delivered the Bampton lectures are: Arnold Toynbee, Paul Tillich, Fred Hoyle, Alasdair C. MacIntyre, Jonathan Riley-Smith, and Irving Weissman.