The Wayne State University Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology will present Jeremy Nathans, M.D., Ph.D., professor of Molecular Biology, Genetics, Neuroscience and Ophthalmology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, as its keynote speaker Feb. 8 for its Vision Core Seminar Series.
Dr. Nathans will present "Canonical Wnt signaling in retinal vascular development and disease" at noon via live video conference at noon in the Margherio Family Conference Center. The presentation, including questions and answers, will be given through Skype.
"We organized the seminar in a video conferencing format because Dr. Nathans is one of the leading advocates of environmental protection in the scientific community," said Shunbin Xu, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of Ophthalmology and of Anatomy and Cell Biology for WSU and the Kresge Eye Institute. "Dr. Nathans has called upon scientists to lead by example, cutting down on long-distance air travel to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases and the carbon footprint of the scientific community. This will be one of the first at WSU to take action on reducing our carbon footprint while welcoming one of the most distinguished scientists into our campus."
Dr. Nathans will be speaking live from the studio in the Wilmer Eye Institute at Johns Hopkins University.
"Dr. Nathans is one of the most important accomplished scientists in the vision field in the modern era. He has made major contributions to our current understanding of vision, retinal development and inherited retinal degeneration," Dr. Xu said. "He currently serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Foundation Fighting Blindness; the grant review panels for the Life Sciences Research Foundation and the Klingenstein/Simons Foundation; the editorial boards of eLife and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; and the jury for the Lasker Prizes."
Dr. Nathans received his bachelor's degrees in Chemistry and Life Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a doctoral degree in Biochemistry (working with David Hogness, Ph.D.), and a medical degree as a trainee in the Medical Scientist Training Program at Stanford Medical School. His interest in vision research began while at Stanford, where he was strongly influenced by Professors Denis Baylor and Lubert Stryer. He spent one year as a postdoctoral fellow with Axel Ullrich, Ph.D., at Genentech. In 1988, he joined the faculty in the Departments of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Neuroscience, and Ophthalmology at the Johns Hopkins Medical School. Since 1988, he has also been an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
At Stanford, Dr. Nathans and Dr. Hogness isolated the first DNA sequences coding for a G-protein coupled receptor and for a eukaryotic sensory receptor (rhodopsin), identified and sequenced the genes for the three visual pigments responsible for human color vision and defined the molecular basis for the most common forms of inherited color vision deficiency in humans. At Johns Hopkins, his research interests expanded to encompass inherited retinal disease, retinal development and evolution, and photoreceptor biochemistry and cell biology. His most recent contributions are in the areas of retinal vascular biology and vascular disease.
His laboratory has pioneered the study of the Frizzled family of receptors, which play a central role in controlling cell proliferation, pattern formation and homeostasis in a wide variety of organ systems.
Dr. Nathans has a longstanding interest in educating graduate and medical students. At Johns Hopkins, his teaching includes genetics, neuroscience, psychiatry and infectious disease. His course for graduate students - "Great Experiments in Biology" - is one of the most heavily subscribed courses on campus. He has recorded freely available web-based lectures for high school and college students under the aegis of iBioSeminars, iBio101 and the HHMI Holiday Lectures. His contributions to education have been recognized with all three of Johns Hopkins' major teaching awards (the Teacher of the Year from the Graduate Student Association, the Professor's Award for Distinction in Teaching in the Basic Sciences, and the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence from the American Medical Student Association).
His contributions to basic and clinical vision sciences have been recognized with numerous honors, including the Champalimaud Award for Vision Research (shared with King-Wai Yau), the Beckman-Argyros Award from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, the Edward Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience from the McGovern Institute at MIT, and the Lifetime Achievement award in Biomedical Science from Stanford Medical School. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
For more information about the presentation, contact Selina Latimore-Hall at 313-577-1061 or shall@med.wayne.edu.